Primary Sources (African American History): Before searching

Before you start to look for primary sources, you MUST read up on your topic using secondary sources. Use the 5 W's of information-gathering :

• Who
• Who were the key players in the topic you are looking at? If you are researching a person, who are they? Make a note of alias names or alternate spellings of their name.
• What
• What happened? In which order did these events occur? What is your topic called? Did people originally call your topic a different name than the one people use for it today?
• When
• Dates or date ranges relevent to your topic. If you are researching a person, be sure to include important dates in their lives as well. (Date of birth, death, dates of important accomplishments, etc.) The more specific you get, the easier it will be to find primary sources.
• Where
• In which country, state/providence, city or neighborhood did the event/phenomenon take place? If you are researching an individual, where were they born? Where did they live? Where did they die? The more specific you get, the easier it will be to find primary sources.
• Why
• What were the events leading up this? Did the people or institutions participating in the event/phenomenon have reason for doing so?

It will be extremely difficult to find primary sources unless you are familiar with these five basic types of information as they apply to your topic. Seek them out and write them down. If you are strapped for time, you can at least read and take notes from encyclopedia articles on your topic.

Print encyclopedias are located on the first floor of the William C. Jason Library. Researchers are encouraged to use the library's catalog to find out more about the encyclopedias we have, including the location information for individual encyclopedias.

The library also provides reference databases that researchers can use to find encyclopedia entries on their topics.

An author who writes a secondary source will often cite primary sources in their work. Because of this, you should always be on the lookout for bibliographies, works cited lists, footnotes and reference lists included in secondary sources. The easiet way to pick out the primary sources in these lists is by looking at the publication date and the author of each work being cited. Many primary sources, as you should recall, will have a publication date close to the time of the historical event you are researching, or will have been written by people who witnessed the event featured in the book.

When you have found a primary source on one of these lists, use one of the library's catalogs to see if the library has a copy of it. For books, search by the title of the work, the name of the author or both. For an article, search by the name of the magazine/newspaper/journal it was published in to see if the library has the volume or year you are looking for.

This process can take a long time, especially if you are looking through multiple bibliographies, but it is key to finding primary sources.

You can find bibliographies, works cited, reference lists etc. in:

• Books. They can be in chapter notes or at the end of the entire book
• Scholarly journal articles. Look for reference or works cited lists at the end of the articles. Pay attention to literature reviews included within the articles. Occassionally you will encounter articles that are nothing but literature reviews.
• Some stand-alone bibliographies are available at the William C. Jason library. Search the catalog to find them.
• Online. Use a search engine to see if you can find pathfinders or other information compiled by museums, libraries, government agencies, credible nonprofits or educational institutions