The Library has several resources to help you enhance your project with primary sources. If you are unclear if something is a primary source, Yale has an excellent page that breaks down the various categories of primary sources.

Library catalog 

• Do a keyword search in the catalog using the words primary sources + (a topic keyword).  For example: a search of primary sources world war ii, returns 111 different resources. Your results may include books, DVDs, audiobooks, or government documents.
• Other keywords you can use to search the catalog are oral history (or histories), speeches, documents, interviews, photographs, footage, correspondence, memoir, and personal narratives.

Newspaper and magazine articles:  

• New York Times Historical   pdf images of the New York Times, from 1851-2001. Especially good for obituaries. (At-home use for City of La Crosse residents w/library card /PIN) .
• Newspaper Archive  Millions of pages (in .pdf) from newspapers all over the world, dating back to 1700, including some Wisconsin and La Crosse pages.(Provided by Badgerlink and available to all Wisconsin residents)
• Reader's Guide Retrospective   Indexes popular magazine titles from 1890-1982. The library has a limited selection of these titles in paper and on microfilm or fiche. Check at the Reference Desk to see if we own what you're looking for. (At-home use for City of La Crosse residents w/library card /PIN)

Online resources for documents such as speeches, inaugural addresses, letters, telegrams, memoirs, truces, and declarations of war

• History Reference Center and the Military and Government Collection. Start at the Advanced Search page. Type your keyword or topic in the main search bar. In the "Limit your results" section, you can use "Publication Type" to narrow your search to "Primary Source Document." (Provided by Badgerlink and available to all Wisconsin residents)
• Historic Map Works  Enhance your project with over 100,000 high-quality digital maps, including over 70,000 maps for Wisconsin. (At-home use available for City of La Crosse residents. Need library card #/PIN)
• Student Research Center Experience history first hand through primary source documents that have shaped our world. (Provided by Badgerlink and available to all Wisconsin residents)

Wisconsin and La Crosse Topics

• For La Crosse-area topics, start with our local history specialists in the Archives Department on the 2nd floor.
• La Crosse-area newspapers from La Crosse, Onalaska, Holmen, Bangor and West Salem on microfilm/fiche. Ask for help at the Archives desk on the 2nd floor.
• La Crosse History Unbound Digitized maps, journals, photos, city directories, articles and more.
• Maps and Atlases of La Crosse County, Wisconsin and the Upper Mississippi River Images of maps from the La Crosse Public Library, Murphy Library at the University of WIsconsin-La Crosse and the Wisconsin Historical Society.

American Memory at the Library of Congress. American Memory provides free and open access through the Internet to written and spoken words, sound recordings, still and moving images, prints, maps, and sheet music that document the American experience.

Time Magazine Archive of Time magazine articles and covers from 1923-present.

We know that your teachers have told you to not use Wikipedia. We agree that you should not be using Wikipedia as a source for your NHD project. The librarians at the Reference Desk, however, have found Wikipedia to be a great starting place for topics that we don't know much about. Wikipedia has given us access to information that, a few years ago, would have taken us forever to find or that we might never have found. It's also a great place to find sources. A good Wikipedia article will have citations at the bottom of the article. As long as you can determine that the citations come from legitimate sources, a Wikipedia article can be a gold mine.

_{Last updated on 10/2010 by Rochelle Hartman}