Hello, this is the library research guide for HIST 450 Senior Seminar in Chinese American History with Professor Chiou-Ling Yeh. The purpose of this guide is to help you "learn the necessary research skills of doing primary source research and complete a 15-page primary source research paper focusing on one aspect of Chinese American history." (from the syllabus).
You'll see a section with information about the worksheet that you'll complete during the library session, as well as a section with tips and links on primary source research.
Need help? Email Laurel Bliss at lbliss@sdsu.edu
During the library session, you'll be working on a couple of practice questions. Please right click the link to this Google doc and open it in a new tab. It will prompt you to log into your @sdsu.edu email account and then save a copy.
When you've completed the questions, please rename the document to something that includes your name and HIST 450, and email it as an attachment to lbliss@sdsu.edu.
Primary source documents are frequently collected in published books. To find these collections in our OneSearch system, follow these steps.
1. Brainstorm some keywords and phrases about your topic. If you were researching women's suffrage in America, for example, some good keywords and phrases might be "suffrage," "women," "feminis*," "nineteenth amendment," "vote*," or "activis*". (Note: the asterisk is used to truncate a word, so the system will search for all variations).
2. At the Advanced Search, pair your keyword with some of them common words found in subject headings for primary sources. These include:
* sources
* correspondence
* diaries
* speeches
* personal narratives
* documents
* interviews
3. If you want to impose any limits on your search, such as as location or language, choose them in the options box. Then click Submit.
4. Browse your results and click on titles which sound relevant or useful to your topic.
Chronicles the evolution of American history, culture and daily life through thousands of historical newspapers from all 50 states.
The California Digital Newspaper Collection contains 670,350 issues comprising 7,612,619 pages and 44,629,258 articles as of Jan 2022. Newspapers in the collection by title here.
Includes over 470 historical and current California Newspapers, including the San Diego Union Tribune.
Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers contains pages from 1777-1963. The site is produced by the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP), a partnership between the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Library of Congress (LC). It is a long-term effort to develop an Internet-based, searchable database of U.S. newspapers with descriptive information and select digitization of historic pages.
Cover-to-cover full-image archive, 1881-1993.
ProQuest Platform screen reader instructions
Proquest Platform accessibility statement
Cover-to-cover full-image archive.
ProQuest Platform screen reader instructions
Proquest Platform accessibility statement
Paid subscription expires 07/01/2024
Feedback about this resource can be submitted through the Electronic Resource Trial Feedback form.
Covers the investigations made by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) during the massive immigration wave of 1880-1930. The files cover Asian immigration, especially Japanese and Chinese migration, to California, Hawaii, and other states; Mexican immigration to the U.S. from 1906-1930, and European immigration. There are also extensive files on the INS’s regulation of prostitution and white slavery and on suppression of radical aliens.
Proquest History Vault Accessibility Stattement
Alexander Street’s Manuscript Women’s Letters and Diaries from the American Antiquarian Society brings together 100,000 pages of the personal writings of women of the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries, displayed as high-quality images of the original manuscripts, extensively indexed and online for the first time. The letters and diaries reveal, in each woman’s own hand, the details of the authors’ daily lives, their activities and concerns, and their attitudes towards the people and world around them. The collection is drawn entirely from the extensive holdings of the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, Massachusetts.
Paid subscription expires 07/01/2024
Feedback about this resource can be submitted through the Electronic Resource Trial Feedback form.
With more than 100,000 pages of personal narratives, including letters, diaries, pamphlets, autobiographies, and oral histories, the collection provides a rich source for scholars in a wide range of disciplines. Much of the material is previously unpublished. Several thousand pages of Ellis Island Oral History interviews, indexed and searchable for the first time, are included, along with thousands of political cartoons.
Alexandar Street Platform accessibility statement
The Online Archive of California (OAC) provides free public access to detailed descriptions of primary source collections maintained by more than 150 California institutions, including libraries, special collections, archives, historical societies and museums throughout the state. More than 20,000 finding aids are in the OAC.
Detailed information about using OAC finding aids (also called collection guides) is available http://www.oac.cdlib.org/help/detailedhelp.html#guides.
Gale Primary Sources is an integrated research environment that allows users to search across all of their Gale primary source collections. Gale Primary Sources takes users beyond a simple search and retrieve workflow, allowing them to analyze content using frequency and term-relationship tools. Through intuitive subject-indexing users will discover new material even in the most familiar of content sets.
Uncover information on hundreds of the most significant people, events, and topics in U.S. history from a variety of sources.
