Internet Resources for Primary Research

Research is an art, not a science, and the best discoveries are often those you didnt expect to make. When doing research on the internet, you must always keep in mind that online searches are by definition leading questions, and they usually indicate what sort of answer we expect to get, and limit what we do get. When youre searching online, try searching with lots of different terms. For example, if youre searching a photographic archive for photographs related to food, you might search for food, but also for terms like meal, breakfast, hunger, cake, groceries, etc. Most importantly, try to think creatively. * MSU Library Website: http://www2.lib.msu.edu Select Resources tab. Then select E-Resources. Then select Primary Sources on left. (See Newspapers, for example.) * The Library of Congress American Memory digital collection: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/index.html * HathiTrust or Google Books: http://www.hathitrust.org/ OR http://books.google.com/ * ProQuest Historical Newspapers: http://search.proquest.com.proxy2.cl.msu.edu/news/ * Cornell Home Economics Collection: http://hearth.library.cornell.edu/ * Archive.org: http://www.archive.org/ See, for example, Moving Pictures, then Ephemeral Films. * The Ad*Access Project, Duke University: http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/adaccess/ * The American Mosaic: The African American Experience http://africanamerican2.abcclio.com/?webSiteCode=SLN_AAE_AC&returnToPage=%2f&token=857DB75782630F DC31D962D14B1807F0&casError=False * Valley of the Shadow website (about Civil War border counties) http://valley.lib.virginia.edu/ * Statistical Abstracts website http://statab.conquestsystems.com.proxy2.cl.msu.edu/sa/index.html?id=d1120f92-6b0d490f-a2a0-c8262f9a8a83 * A good source for southern history: http://docsouth.unc.edu/index.html

Other hints: * Go to any worldcat.org or to any university library website, do an advanced search and explore. If you find something interesting at a different library thats not available at MSU, you can request it with Interlibrary Loan and it will usually be shipped here free for your use. * You can always try a regular Google search to see whats out there, but youll have to verify anything you find with a credible source. And search for verification can be timeconsuming and end with a dead-end. * Go-to site for secondary articles (ie, written by other historians): www.jstor.org.