Doing History on the Couch

I recently gave a rather informal talk at the Historical Studies of DC conference part of which was was about Mrs. George R. Putnam hosting a tea for suffragists and part of which was about doing history research from home rather than in an archive.  I hope to write up the little talk on the tea soon, but for now, here is the handout I gave on free digitized primary sources that I use (there is one set that is only available to people with a DC public library card, but . . . your public library may have similar subscriptions).  Obviously, people on campuses often have many, many more sources available, but since I don't have that acess I left my list sorter.

Doing History at Home

Free Digitized Sources

Prepared by Lucy Barber, November 4, 2010

www.google.com/book

Digitized entire library of books. Not just books, many magazines, membership lists, college publications.

Can set data range.  When it sorts by date, it sorts with most recent date first which is not convenient. 

For pre 1923 research, set to “Full View only.”

Internet Archive

www.archive.org

Also digitized entire university library as well as other items. Better date limits, less books.

Digitized Newspapers

http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov

Digitizing newspapers state by state (does not include Washington Post).

Lets you focus on region if you wish. 

Date search is good.

Also has feature to allow you to search for words “close” to each other.  Helpful with names often when a middle initial may or may not be used.

Digitized Newspapers available with a DC Library card:

Washington Post

http://dclibrary.org/node/214

Historic Black Newspapers

http://dclibrary.org/node/124 (alphabetical listing)

Photographs:

www.loc.gov/pictures

Only portion of collection but allow quite good searches and can download many.

www.flickr.com

Many photographs, not always well described, not always fair to use.

www.flickr.com/commons

Place for bigger repositories to post photographs and to welcome comments that they can use to improve the description of items. 

I did warn people that a challenge of doing this type of research (which other people echoed at the conference) was it was easy to lose track of time as you find marvelous things that only sort of relate to your topic.  My example would be these charming "Russian" dances who performed at a New York City Suffrage Ball in 1914.  No relation to what I was looking for, but nice picture:

Source: Library of Congress, http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/ggb2005015317/

Or this scandalous DC suffragist smoking at the Chevy Chase Club

Miss Sarah Anderson, a Washington suffragist who advocates equal smoking rights for men and women in public places, . . . as she "puffed" a cigarette at the Chevy Chase Club
LOC: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2004670186