Skip to Main Content

HI 153 United States since 1964

Primary Sources in BU Libraries Search

The search box on the main library webpage (use Advanced Search) is a good place to begin a search for primary sources. The library uses Library of Congress subject headings to classify the books in the collection and there are a number of Library of Congress subheadings that point to primary sources. They are:

  • correspondence
  • sources
  • diaries
  • personal narratives
  • interviews
  • speeches
  • documents
  • archives
  • early works to 1800

These terms can be used in a subject search or a keyword search. Examples of subject searches would be:

  • United States--History--War of 1812– Personal Narratives
  • Presidents--United States--Messages
  • Watergate Affair, 1972-1974-Sources

Examples of keyword searches would be:

  • Civil War and diaries
  • American Revolution and sources
  • Lyndon Johnson and interviews

Many primary documents are reprinted in published sources such as Documents of American History, Annals of America, and Speeches of the American Presidents and these and others are available in the library.

Primary Source Databases

Historical Newspapers

Print books

Librarian

Profile Photo
Donald Altschiller
Contact:
Mugar Memorial Library
617-358-3955
Subjects: History, Religion

Acknowledgements
https://library.bu.edu/c.php?g=615006&p=4276262
library.bu.edu
crawl=CC-MAIN-2022-27
71978
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:2DD6LJ7PQ3E5EZGMYFAX7CQLVUHFUXRL
<urn:uuid:2f22d9a3-f541-43df-88fe-43d2ddb6431e>
2022-07-01T23:35:59Z
54.88.35.99
text/html
sha1:DVL7QWW2YJRJVU56SDXZQX2CVJIQ3JVE
<urn:uuid:db2bf8dd-4777-4e28-8939-7107e3a7aa1d>
https://library.bu.edu/c.php?g=615006&p=4276262
response
<urn:uuid:1e5bf297-d1e9-46ce-b9e0-a7d0e0ddb535>
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2022-27
publisher: Common Crawl
description: Wide crawl of the web for June/July 2022
operator: Common Crawl Admin (info@commoncrawl.org)
hostname: ip-10-67-67-153
software: Apache Nutch 1.18 (modified, https://github.com/commoncrawl/nutch/)
robots: checked via crawler-commons 1.3-SNAPSHOT (https://github.com/crawler-commons/crawler-commons)
format: WARC File Format 1.1
conformsTo: https://iipc.github.io/warc-specifications/specifications/warc-format/warc-1.1/