Types of Resources
Primary resources are documents original to a particular point in the past. They provide evidence of the events and perspectives of a time. Examples:
- Novels, plays, and other literary works
- Letters and diaries
- Government documents
- Newspaper and periodical articles
- Speeches and interviews
- Photographs
Secondary resources synthesize primary resources, personal experience, close reading, and original arguments to make a claim. Secondary resources can lend other voices to support or counter your own claim. Examples:
- Scholarly articles
- Biographies
- Literature reviews
Background resources are topical overviews which can provide context. Examples:
- Encyclopedias
- Almanacs
- Textbooks
Quirks of 17th-18th c. Resources
Reading 17th and 18th century documents has its quirks. When working with these resources, remember to look for these options:
Variant spellings: Before the standardization of English, many words had a number of alternate spellings. Check to see if your database has a variant spellings feature, or enter variants manually.
The long S: This symbol ſ was used when S appeared in the beginning and middle of a word.
U and V: These letters used to be interchangable, with v appearing at the beginning of a word and u in the middle.
Dates: Some databases may permit searches outside of your date range, so take care to limit dates if necessary.
Imagine the Possibilities
Primary Resource Databases
- EEBO: Early English Books OnlineThousands of works from 1473-1700.
- ECCO: Eighteenth Century Collections OnlineOver 100,000 English-language materials from the 18th century.
- 17th-18th Century Burney CollectionNewspapers, pamphlets, and books gathered by the Reverend Charles Burney (1757-1817) and held by the British Library digitized and made available online.
- British PeriodicalsOn completion this digital archive will consist of more than 460 periodical runs published from the 1680s to the 1930s, comprising six million keyword-searchable pages and forming an unrivaled record of more than two centuries of British history and culture.
- 18th Century JournalsNewspapers and periodicals, 1685-1835.
- American Periodicals Series Online 1740-1900Includes digitized images of the pages of 1,100 American magazines and journals published from colonial days to the dawn of the 20th century.
- Early American Imprints, Series I: Evans, 1639-1800American publications from 1639 to 1800. Browsable by subject, genre, author, etc.
- Early American Newspapers, 1690-1900This database focuses on American newspapers first published before the Civil War. The collection includes over 900 newspapers.
- North American Women's Letters and Diaries, Colonial to 1950Fulltext of letters and diaries, published and manuscript, of American women during the Colonial period through 1950.
Secondary Resource Databases
- MLA International BibliographyPrimary database for literary criticism. Covers literature, languages, folklore, and linguistics.
- JSTORJSTOR specializes in making available the back issues of journals in a wide variety of humanities and social science disciplines.
- Project MuseProject Muse provides full text access to articles from over 300 scholarly journals in the humanities, arts, social sciences and sciences.
- America: History and LifeA bibliographic database indexing books, book chapters, and over 1,800 journals relating to the history of the United States and Canada from prehistory to the present.
- Historical AbstractsHistorical coverage of the world from 1450 to the present (excluding the United States and Canada).
- Google ScholarAccess to Google Scholar with Penn-only links to full-text articles.