by Linda Mork
Quick Summary
History Day is now in full swing, and many second semester research projects are beginning. If you are working with students searching for those elusive primary sources, encourage them to check out these databases in eLibrary Minnesota (ELM).
Body
History Day is now in full swing, and many second semester research projects are beginning. If you are working with students searching for those elusive primary sources, encourage them to check out the following databases in eLibrary Minnesota (ELM):
- Gale in Context Middle School and High School will sort and display search results into a variety of content types, including Primary Sources. A recent search for Civil War in Gale in Context High School, for example, brought back 93 Primary Sources, as well as 148 Images (with citations!). Researchers can also filter their results by Publication Date: just type over the years to replace, or Start the Topic Finder to find subtopics and ideas for keywords.
- Explora Teens does not display its search results in categories, but you can limit by Source Types on the sidebar to the left of the results. A search for Civil War in this database yielded 446 Primary Source Documents. The Publication Date slider bar can also be used to easily refine results. I like to remind students that not only can they slide to the right to bring back more recent resources when currency matters, but they can also slide to the left to find primary source documents from a particular time period.
- In addition, students may want to try searching for American topics from 1684-1912 in AAS Historical Periodicals, for more recent topics in Proquest Global Newsstream which offers global news content starting from the 1980s, and for Minnesota topics in Historical Minneapolis Tribune (1867-1922) provided by the Minnesota Historical Society or Minnesota Reflections from the Minnesota Digital Library.
Good luck out there finding primary sources!
