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PRIMARY SOURCE REPORTS ASSIGNMENT

This exercise is intended to get you into the library, exploring large sets of primary source documents of potential use to you this semester.  In your final paper, one or more of these large, rich collections should be central.  This list is hardly exhaustive, though; there are still more large collections that may be of use to you in your paper project.  These sources are large and complex; simply finding all of their parts can be tricky.  Make sure you find and report on the complete collection, its accompanying supplements, and any finding aids.

Your report should address the following questions.  (Depending on the source and its particular challenges, some sections of your report may be longer or shorter than others.)  It is important to spend time with your source in order to understand it fully.  I’m expecting a complete and comprehensive report. Your written report should include call numbers and all information necessary for the uninitiated user to begin using the source.  

1.    What is it?  Describe its form and contents.
2.    When was it made?  By whom?  Why?
3.    Who appears in it?
4.    How is it organized?
5.    How do you use it?  Does it have finding aids or supplemental material?
6.    How do you get access to it?  Where is it physically located, and what strictures (if any) are placed on access?
7.    What kinds of questions can it answer?

What to hand in:
1.  Prepare a written report that you will submit to me.
2.  Come to class prepared to present this information to your colleagues.
3.  Post your report on the “source reports wiki” on the blackboard website for this course, so that all may benefit from your work.

    Your wiki entry should have a standard format.  Create a new page for your report, and title the page with the title of your collection.  Include your name and class year on the page.  And include the questions above with their answers.  There is a sample page on the wiki, entitled “Patrick Rael collection.”

 

SOURCES

ARCHIVAL COLLECTIONS
Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain Collection
Oliver Otis Howard Collection
[many other individual subject areas]

PERIODICALS
Scholarly Resources microfilm edition. Series 4 : Black periodicals
American periodicals, 1741-1900 (micoform)
America’s Historical Newspapers
American Broadsides and Ephemera
American Periodical Series
Harper’s Weekly
Periodicals on women and women's rights
Making of America (two websites)

GOVERNMENT DOCUMENTS
The Congressional Globe
Congressional Serial Set (hardbound and electronic versions)
United States Statutes at Large
A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents
Public papers of the presidents of the United States
Treaties and Other International Agreements of the United States of America, 1776-1949
American State Papers
Historical United States Census Data Browser
Federal population censuses, 1790-1890; a catalog of microfilm
Microfilm list: Maine town and census records Maine State Archives

SLAVERY
Documents Illustrative of the History of the Slave Trade to America, Elizabeth Donnan, ed., 4 vols. (1930-35)
The American Slave: a Composite Autobiography
Runaway Slave Advertisements
Records of Ante-bellum Southern Plantations from the Revolution Through the Civil War
Judicial Cases Concerning American Slavery and the Negro (1926-37)

ANTISLAVERY AND PROSLAVERY
The Liberator (1831-1865) [microform]
Freedom’s Journal (all related to this)
Garrison's Letters
Anti-slavery Tracts
Black Abolitionist Papers Collection (Microfilm) and The Black Abolitionist Papers (bound volumes)
Microfilm edition of the papers of the Maryland State Colonization Society

THE CIVIL WAR
Northern Editorials on Secession and Southern Editorials on Secession
The Civil War: a Newspaper Perspective
The War of the Rebellion: a Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies
Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Confederacy
A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Confederacy
Records of the 54th Massachusetts Colored Infantry
Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation

RECONSTRUCTION AND AFTER
The Klan Hearings. (42nd Congress, 2d Session, House Reports, Report of the Joint Select Committee to Inquire into the Condition of Affairs in the Late Insurrectionary States. 13 Vols. 1872)
United States. Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands. Selected Series of Records Issued by the Commissioner of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands.
The Reconstruction Amendments' Debates; the Legislative History and Contemporary Debates in Congress on the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments

LABOR AND JIM CROW
A Documentary History of American Industrial Society
The Black Worker: A Documentary History from Colonial Times to the Present
Manuscript Collections on the Early American Labor Movement, 1862-1908
Booker T. Washington Papers, Louis Harlan, ed.
Southern Historical Society Papers
The Peonage files of the U.S. Department of Justice, 1901-1945
Anti-black Thought, 1863-1925
Black workers in the era of the great migration, 1916-1925
Microfilm edition of Papers of the NAACP
Records of the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs, 1895-1992
Federal surveillance of Afro-Americans (1917-1925)

MISCELLANEOUS MICROFORM COLLECTIONS
Abstracts of service records of naval officers
American culture 1493-1806
Records of the Moravian mission among the Indians
Franklin Pierce papers
Periodicals on women and women's rights