History 60/160: America's Immigrants (Brillman): Primary Sources

"Primary sources are original records created at the time historical events occurred or well after events in the form of memoirs and oral histories. Primary sources may include letters, manuscripts, diaries, journals, newspapers, speeches, interviews, memoirs, documents produced by government agencies such as Congress or the Office of the President, photographs, audio recordings, moving pictures or video recordings, research data, and objects or artifacts such as works of art or ancient roads, buildings, tools, and weapons. These sources serve as the raw material to interpret the past, and when they are used along with previous interpretations by historians, they provide the resources necessary for historical research."
(American Library Association, Reference and User Services, History Section)

Many primary sources  have been digitized and made available on the web. You have to be careful, though, because often the source of the document is not provided.  You need to evaluate each web site carefully to determine if it is reliable.  Primary sources available from University Archives or State archives are the best.  To search for primary sources ,  you can just add the words "primary sources" to your search to locate such documents on the web. 

Finding Primary Sources in the Library

Primary Sources on specific topics are  often collected  and published as a monograph (collection of letters for example). A book can also include primary sources in appendices.  To locate primary sources on your topic, an easy way is to search the library catalog and to add to your search some keywords describing primary sources such as :  letters or diaires, or documents, or sources.   For example a search on Gold Rush and Letters  would retrieve the following book:  "Off for California; the Letters, log and sketches of William Hl. Dougal, gold rush artist".  To search through the Library catalog, just go to the search box on the library home page.

Collections of Primary Sources

Below are collections of primary sources on various topics available from SCU or freely on the web. 

Library of Congress Digital Collections
This site provides free and open access through the Internet "to written and spoken words, sound recording, still and moving images, prints, maps, and sheet music that document the American experience. It is a digital record of American history and creativity."

Immigration and Multiculturalism:  Essential Primary Sources
This volume of primary source documents focuses on some of the leading social issues of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries: immigration and multiculturalism. It contains approximately 175 full and excerpted documents---speeches, legislation, magazine and newspaper articles, essays, memoirs, letters, interviews, novels, songs, and works of art---as well as overview information that places each document in context.

Aspiration, Acculturation, and Impact:  Immigration to the United States, 1789 to 1930
This web-based collection of historical materials from Harvard's libraries, archives, and museums documents voluntary immigration to the United States from the signing of the Constitution to the onset of the Great Depression.

The John Novak Oral History Archives
Consists of interviews about immigration, migration, and the Civil Rights Movement. The interviewees, who range in age from 20 to 90, speak of their experiences moving to and within the United States.

Oxford African American Studies Center
Provides access to more than 7,500 articles focusing on African American history and culture. The articles come from major reference sources and are written by leading scholars in the field. Also includes primary sources, images, and maps.

Slavery, Abolition, and Social Justice
Designed for teaching and research, this resource brings together documents and collections from libraries and archives across the Atlantic world, covering an extensive time period from 1490. Topics covered include the varieties of slavery, the legacy of slavery, the social justice perspective and the continued existence of slavery today.

South Asian American Digital Archive
This archive documents, preserves and provides access to the history of the South Asian Aerican Commubity.  You can browse the archive  themes, subjects, or time periods.

Densho Digital Archives
The Densho Archives contain primary sources that document the Japanese American experience from immigration in the early 1900s through redress in the 1980s, with a strong focus on the World War II mass incarcerations. 
Bracero History Archive
Provides "oral histories and artifacts pertaining to the Bracero program, a guest worker initiative that spanned the years 1942-1964. Millions of Mexican agricultural workers crossed the border under the program to work in more than half of the states in America." 
The Chinese in California, 1850-1925

Government Documents

There is a great deal of historical information in government documents and you often need them as primary sources for your research. 

The following database and online resources are also useful to locate government documents:
ProQuest Congressionnal Publications
Congressional Publications; bills, laws and reglations; legislative histories; hearings and more

If you have trouble locating government documents on your topic, please consult Sophia Neuhaus, Government Documents librarian at sneuhaus@scu.edu.  For more information about government documents, consult the research guide on congressional publications.

Magazine Articles 

Magazine articles from the popular press are often used as primary sources in history research.  The most useful resources to find magazine articles for history research are:

Opinions Archives
Provides access to the complete archives of 17 leading journals of opinion, including Dissent, Commentary, Harper's, National Review, The New Yorker, and The New Republic.

Readers' Guide Full-Text : This database provides indexing and abstracting of over 300 popular magazines from 1983 to date, with full text from over 150 publications back to 1994.
Readers' Guide Retrospective, 1890-1982 : Indexes more than 3 million articles from about 370 general interest, popular, news, and even a few scholarly, English language magazines and journals published between 1890 and 1982
American Periodical Series : A collection of full-text periodicals and primary source materials related to the American experience from the colonial days to 1900.

American Antiquarian Society Historical Periodicals Collection

A collection of books, pamphlets, broadsides, newspapers, periodicals, music, and graphic arts material printed through 1876 in what is now the United States, as well as manuscripts and a collection of secondary texts, bibliographies, and digital resources related to all aspects of American history and culture before the twentieth century. 

Newspaper Articles
If you have trouble connecting to any of the newspaper sources below, go to the list of databases on the library home page and select the one you want.

Hispanic American Newspapers
A database of hundreds of Hispanic American newspapers published between 1808-1980 from 22 states, many of which are from California, Texas, New Mexico, and New York. Many newspapers are bilingual.

San Jose Mercury News : Full-text of the San Jose Mercury News from 1985 to the present.

California Newspapers Digital CollectionThe California Digital Newspaper Collection offers over 200,000 pages of California newspapers spanning the years 1849-191l:

Historical Newspapers Online (from Penn State)
Links to digitized collections of historical local newspapers from around the country.

Historical African American Newspapers
Links to hundreds of African American newspapers.  Coverage varies.  Quality of digitization varies as well.