• The following subheadings will help to identify published primary source material in the Woodruff Library stacks:
  • Autobiography
  • Correspondence
  • Diaries
  • Newspapers
  • Personal Narratives
  • Sermons
  • Sources
  • Speeches, Addresses, etc.
• Use these subheadings with headings for History 340 topics such as:
  • United States History Colonial Period
  • United States History Revolution 1775-1783
  • United States History 17th Century
  • United States History 18th Century
  • Great Britain Colonies
  • North America History Colonial Period
  • America Colonization History to 1810
• For example, United States History Colonial Period Sources
  
• "Complex" searches in EUCLID, Emory's online library catalog, can be limited by "format" to MANUSCRIPTS.
• "Complex" searches may also be limited to the publication years of the event or issue being investigated.

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• Many primary sources are available in the Special Collections & Archives area of the Woodruff Library. Their Web page includes a description of their collections. Click here for a representative list of American Colonial History manuscript collections held in the Emory Libraries.
• Most available documents from the colonial era are official records deriving from British government archives, especially the Public Record Office. Most are organized by colony, and printed without editorial commentary. A convenient guide to these materials is found in the Harvard Guide to American History (2 volumes, 1976), Ref. Desk Z1236 .F74, volume, 1, pages 79-86.
• There is no convenient guide to non-government documents in general, but there are guides to certain kinds of them:
  • For tracts, pamphlets, and books published in the Colonies, see Early American Imprints, Series I. Evans (1639-1800), or, in paper, Charles Evans, American Bibliography (14 volumes, 1903-59), Reference Z1215 .E92. The Woodruff Library owns microfiche copies of most of the works cited in this bibliography, Microfiche 1367, as well.
  • For autobiographies, see Mary Louise Briscoe's American Autobiography (1982), Reference Z5305 .U5 A47 1982.
  • For diaries & letters of North American women (Colonial era to 1950), see North American Women's Letters & Diaries.
  • For accounts of Indian captivities, see Alden Vaughan's Narratives of North American Indian Captivity (1983), Reference Z1209.2 .N67 V38 1983.
  • For travelers' accounts, see Garold Cole's Travels in America (1984), Reference Z1236 .C64 1984.
  • For newspapers, see Clarence Saunders Brigham's History and Bibliography of American Newspapers, 1690-1820 (1947), Reference Z6951 .B75 1947. To find the colonial newspapers owned by the Woodruff Library, check the Woodruff Library Emory University Colonial Newspaper List online.

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• Dictionaries, Encyclopedias and Handbooks
  • To quickly identify people, places and events online, try the Columbia Encyclopedia or Encyclopedia Britannica Online
  • Use the Dictionary of American History (8 vols., Reference E174 .A4 1976) for concise articles on more than 7000 U.S. history topics. Covers all areas except biography. For articles devoted to the North American Colonies, see Encyclopedia of the North American Colonies (3 volumes, Reference E45 .E53 1993).
    

• Biographical Resources
  • For scholarly articles on American historical figures, use the American National Biography ( 24 vols., Reference CT213 .A68 1999), the major biographical resource for U.S. History.
  • Biography and Genealogy Master Index locates biographical sketches in hundreds of biographical sources. Check EUCLID to see if Emory owns the sources cited.
  • Biography Resource Center provides biographical information from a variety of sources including the full text of many articles from the Dictionary of American Biography cited below.
  • Dictionary of American Biography (22 vols. in 11, Reference E176 .D56 1958) is an older, but still very useful, set of scholarly biographical articles.
    

• Secondary Sources (Articles, etc.)

Try one of the following databases to find secondary literature that may in turn lead you to primary sources. Use the Database Locator or relevant subject or course guides to identify additional databases.

• America: History & Life (1964 to present)
  The major current indexing service in American history. Covers journal articles and, since 1974, book reviews and dissertations. In cases when this database does not include full text; check EUCLID to locate cited articles.
  
• JSTOR (Coverage dates vary)
  Provides full text of articles in key scholarly journals in history and many other fields. Provides back years but not the most recent years of a journal (the "moving wall" concept).

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• Primary sources on the Web that let you see a reproduction of the original source are especially useful. Then you can compare the editor's transcript of the document with the original source. For example, see Benedict Arnold's letter to John Andre (from Clements Library, University of Michigan).
• Look for documents that have been put on the Web by reputable sources. For example, see the American Memory site from the Library of Congress. One of the best ways for finding reputable information on the Web is to make use of sites already evaluated and identified by librarians or scholars as academically sound. The Internet Critical Evaluation guide provides tips on finding such sites.
• The following sites may help to identify other useful Internet sites:
  U.S. History Guide Internet Sources
  History Guide

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Send comments to Jana Lonberger,
U.S. History Librarian, Emory University General Libraries.