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Reed Library

Ancient Near East

Locate Primary Sources

Primary sources can be located in

  • Collections housed in archives or libraries.  The Fort Lewis College Center of Southwest Studies has several collections of documents in their original format, including postcards, photographs, newspapers, and College archives.
  • Digital format through online databases.  For example, we subscribe to the journal, Milestone Documents in American History online.
  • Freely available collections on the web.
  • Published in books and microforms that can be located in library catalogs.  

Check out "Making Sense of Evidence" from the History Matters website to help maximize your analysis of primary source documents.

Published Sources

To locate published primary sources, consider the following search strategies at Reed Library or in Prospector and WorldCat.

Keyword Searches

Add the following terms to your keyword searches with AND.

     sources

     documents

     diaries

     personal narratives

     (letters OR correspondence)

     public records

     archives

     description and travel

Examples:

      eisenhower AND sources

      holocaust AND (letters or correspondence)

Subject Searches 

Use Library of Congress Subject Headings. 

Example:

World War, 1939-1945 -- Sources.

United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Personal narratives.

Author Searches  

Use the names of  people and organizations that are central to your topic as authors. (Hint: If you perform this search in WorldCat, limit your search to books.)

Examples of author searches:

   East India Company

   jefferson, thomas

Subjects: History