Hi, everybody. My name is Lisa, and I'm a librarian here at Bell Library at TAMUCC. And I'm here today to share some tips with you about finding primary sources on the internet.
The internet is a great place to look for primary sources. Lots of historical documents have been digitized over the years and made available online by libraries, archives, and museums. And you can search for them using Google.
And by using just a couple of easy strategies, you can explore these resources effectively online. So I've opened up a Google window here in my browser, and it's time to build a search. You'll want to start off your search with the keywords representing your topic, whether it's a person, event, or a movement, or something else you want to explore.
For my example today, I'm going to search for primary sources relating to the prison in Andersonville, Georgia, where union prisoners of war were detained during the Civil War. So my initial keywords will be Andersonville prison. You'll, of course, want to choose whatever keywords represent your topic.
And then, next, we want something to help us find primary sources. You can either go for something broad, like the phrase primary sources, or something more specific, like a particular type of primary source. I recommend that, as you're doing your background reading on your topic, you pay attention to where the historians did their research.
They will usually mention the primary sources they consulted. A good place to look for that information is in the references or bibliography at the end. For example, Abigail Adams wrote many letters that are key primary sources for a study of her life.
You could do a Google search for Abigail Adams letters to try to find those sources online. So we have keywords. We have primary sources.
The last part of the strategy is to use the site limiter to focus our search away from . com websites. Now, I'm going to type site:.
gov at the end of my search and hit Enter. And you'll see that all of the results in my list have addresses that end in . gov.
There's one. By limiting the search this way, I'm avoiding a lot of results that might cost money, and I've hopefully increased the relevance of my search. You can do the same thing with .
edu and . org. Libraries, archives, and museums are all very likely to have web addresses ending with one of these three.
But one word of warning-- this search will not guarantee that everything you find is a primary source. So you will have to analyze what you have found to figure out whether it is an actual historical document. Also, it can be possible to still find content that would cost you money to access.
This is not an assignment that you should have to pay money to complete. If you have questions about whether something is a primary source or if it can be found for free instead of you paying for it, please ask for help. Librarians are available to help with finding primary sources and getting you the things you need.
So contact us for assistance. And that's it. I hope you found this video helpful.
Best wishes on your assignment, and do let us know if we can help in any way. Thanks. Bye-bye.