Japan: History and Culture

Use all of the following methods to find primary sources.

• Read your secondary sources carefully and examine the footnotes and bibliographies. Note primary sources you would like to find. Early published sources may very well be online in full text and freely available. 
• Use some or all of the databases and tools described below, searching by keywords that describe your topic. 
• Use Google and search for archives or digital collections that make primary sources freely available. Use keywords for the place and time and add "archives" or "digital collection." Example search: haiti revolution archives
• Use the list of primary source collections provided by Prof. Dahl.

The internet has enabled anyone to 'publish' material and information. This makes it hazardous for researchers to find reliable information. Primary sources are prevalent on the web, and this makes the historian's work much more efficient, but it is often difficult to discern a web source's reliability. Good strategies for using the web for historical research are:

• aim to get primary material rather than interpretations or essays about the material
• favor materials produced or hosted by libraries or other cultural institutions, such as museums and historical societies
• favor sites with primary material in its original form -- for instance a collection of letters with both the original documents and transcriptions -- and primary material that is relatively complete, not excerpted
• look for the author(s) of a site and investigate the author(s) credentials
• try to determine a site's purpose; for instance, a site may have a political bias, or a site may be directed at an elementary school audience

The HathiTrust repository is a good place to search for primary sources that are available in full text.

JSTOR now contains thousands of images contributed by libraries and other cultural institutions, including images from Artstor. Search JSTOR by keyword, if images contain metadata using your keyword they will display along with journal articles and book chapter results, like this: