Research & Subject Guides: HIS 301: Food in American Culture: PRIMARY SOURCES

Finding Primary Sources

For more information, see the online guide to PRIMARY SOURCES.

To find primary sources at Stony Brook, use STARS, the Library Catalog.

You can include various words in your search that will help you locate primary source material. A good general word to include would be SOURCES.

For example, if you are looking for primary sources on slavery, you can do a KEYWORD ANYWHERE search in STARS for salvery and sources.

Also try these Library of Congress subject headings that are often used for primary sources:

Correspondence
Diaries
Interviews
Personal narratives

Digital Collections at Stony Brook

American Periodicals
Fulltext. 1741-1930. Over 1,100 American magazines spanning 200 years and covering nearly every aspect of American culture, especially its history, science, literature, music, legal structures, agriculture, theater, and politics. Titles range from Benjamin Franklin's General Magazine (first published in 1741) and America's first scientific journals, Medical Repository, as well as Scientific American, to literary and professional journals, specialized titles, and such well-known popular magazines as Vanity Fair, Ladies' Home Journal and The Dial.
Early English Books Online (EEBO)
1473-1700. Fulltext. Virtually every work printed in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and British North America and works in English printed elsewhere from 1473-1700. Contains more than 125,000 titles listed in Pollard & Redgrave's Short-Title Catalogue (1475-1640) and Wing's Short-Title Catalogue (1641-1700) and their revised editions. Subject areas include English literature, history, philosophy, linguistics, theology, music, fine arts, education, mathematics, and science.
Gale Primary Sources: Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO)
1700-1799. Fulltext. Major digital collection consisting of every significant English-language and foreign-language title printed in the United Kingdom during the 18th century, along with thousands of important works from the Americas. Includes over 180,000 titles (200,000 volumes) - books, pamphlets, essays, broadsides and more. Based on the English Short Title Catalogue.
Gale Primary Sources: The Making of the Modern World
1450-1914. Full-text. Includes Part I: The Goldsmiths’-Kress Collection, 1450-1850 and Part II: 1851-1914. An online library of over 66,000 titles, including books, reports, surveys, government publications, correspondence, political pamphlets, speeches, and 466 pre-1906 serials. Combining collections at University of London and Harvard University, The Making of the Modern World is a critical resource for international coverage of social, economic, and business history, as well as political science, technology, industrialization and the birth of the modern corporation. The global scope and wide subject range make it a key resource for History, Economics, Asian Studies, International Affairs, Africana Studies, Political Science, Women/Gender, Anthropology, Law and Philosophy.
North American Women's Letters and Diaries
Colonial-1950. Fulltext primary sources. The experiences of 1,325 women in 150,000 pages of diaries and letters. Includes biographies and an extensive annotated bibliography of the sources.
Oral History Online
Fulltext and citations. Indexes more than 2,700 collections of Oral History in English from around the world. Contains almost 281,000 pages of full-text by close to 10,000 individuals from all walks of life. Also has pointers to 4,100 audio and video files.
Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000
1600-2000. Fulltext primary sources. Women's reform activities in the U.S. from colonial times to the present. Includes books, pamphlets, images, documents, scholarly essays, commentaries, and bibliographies.

Audio and Visual Resources

There are an increasing number of excelent web sites that have audio-visual proimary source material.

Internet Archive - Probably the best overall collection of audio-visual material that could be used for primary sources. The Archive currently contains almost 400,000 moving images and nearly 700,000 audio items, along with software and other material.

YouTube - Great resource for finding speeches and hidtoric news items, as well as musical and cinematic trasures.

Primary Sources on the Web

Library of Congress Digital Collections
Coverage varies. Free and open access to written and spoken words, sound recordings, still and moving images, prints, maps, and sheet music that document the American experience. A digital record of American history and creativity. From the collections of the Library of Congress and other institutions.

Internet History Sourcebooks Project Collection of public domain and copy-permitted historical texts. The main sourcebooks have primary documents for Ancient, Medieval, and Modern history. Other subsidiary sourcebooks include: African, East Asian, Global, Indian, Jewish, Islamic, Lesbian/Gay, Science, Women.
Emergence of Advertising in America: 1850-1920
Over 3,300 advertising items and publications dating from 1850 to 1920, illustrating the rise of consumer culture and the birth of a professionalized advertising industry in the United States.
Ad*Access
Over 7,000 U.S. and Canadian advertisements covering five product categories - Beauty and Hygiene, Radio, Television, Transportation, and World War II propaganda - dated between 1911 and 1955.
AdClassix.com
A unique collection of original, authentic print advertisements spanning the last century.
Not by Bread Alone: America's Culinary Heritage
American food culture has evolved through a rich interplay of foreign adaptation and home-grown invention. The food gathering and cultivation methods of native peoples; America's successive waves of colonial and immigrant populations; and 20th-century revolutions in agriculture and cooking technologies–all have shaped our culinary heritage. "Not by Bread Alone" explores the influences and inventions that have shaped American food habits over the past two hundred years
Historic Food
Material related to food history issues, including galleries of photographs of historic table settings, extensive pages of recipes and other features.
Household Words: Women Write from and for the Kitchen
Feeding America: The Historic American Cookbook Project
Online collection of some of the most important and influential American cookbooks from the late 18th to early 20th century. The digital archive includes page images of 76 cookbooks, as well as searchable full-text transcriptions. This site also features a glossary of cookery terms and multidimensional images of antique cooking implements.

Newspaper Archives on the Internet

Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers
Newspaper pages from 1836-1922. Also includes information about American newspapers published between 1690-present.

Magazine & Journal Collections (Use Net ID)

American Antiquarian Society Historical Periodicals Collection

The American Antiquarian Society Historical Periodicals Collection is the largest collection of North-American-focused historical periodicals available for purchase. Comprised of over 10 million pages, this collection contains approximately 7600 distinct periodical titles, all published between 1691 and 1877. The collection touches on a range of subject areas, including, but not limited to: science, technology, medicine, Native American and African American populations, law, politics, government, music, the arts, literature, language, publishing, agriculture, business and industry, advertising and marketing, religion, philosophy, social movements, military matters, and leisure activities.
American Periodicals Series

Full-text. 1741-1930. Over 1,100 American magazines spanning 200 years and covering nearly every aspect of American culture, especially its history, science, literature, music, legal structures, agriculture, theater, and politics. Titles range from Benjamin Franklin's General Magazine (first published in 1741) and America's first scientific journals, Medical Repository, as well as Scientific American, to literary and professional journals, specialized titles, and such well-known popular magazines as Vanity Fair, Ladies' Home Journal and The Dial.

HIS 301: Food in American Culture

Special Collections & University Archives

Library Databases - Historic Newspapers

Finding Primary Sources

Digital Collections at Stony Brook

Audio and Visual Resources

Primary Sources on the Web

Newspaper Archives on the Internet

Magazine & Journal Collections (Use Net ID)

Library

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