Library Guides: HIST 2950.02: Europe & the Wars of the 20th Century: Primary Sources and Books

Finding Primary Sources

Where to look for primary sources:

Library catalogues for primary sources republished as books
HathiTrust for primary sources old enough to be out of copyright (WWI but not WW2)
Historical newspaper databases (MU-subscribed)
Open-Access Online Archives (especially for visuals, ephemera)
JSTOR for 20th century journal articles
Specialized and local museum & archive websites
Library-subscribed primary source collections

Finding Books

Search strategies that take advantage of standardized terms for primary sources are useful in library catalogs and related resources that use Library of Congress Subject Headings:

Discover@MU
Normally searches books, articles, and many other types of written material. Use the button below the search box to limit Source type to Ebooks and Books in order to find primary sources published as books.

UM System Libraries Catalog
All of MU's print books but only some of our e-books are found here. For complete e-book holdings use Discover@MU, with Source type limited to e-books.
MOBIUS catalog
Shows books from 61 Missouri libraries. Print books may be requested for 40 days (no renewals) via "Place Hold" button.

WorldCat
International catalog containing over 95 million records of books and other materials held in libraries worldwide. Titles unavailable elsewhere can be requested here.

Date Coverage: Before 1000 BC-date

Maximum Users: Unlimited

Truncation:
Plurals: +; Truncation: *; Wildcard: ?

HathiTrust
Full-text searchable collection of scanned publications housed in libraries. Works from years through the 1920s and earlier are likely to be in the public domain, thus available "full view." Copyright law may vary for European works.

Primary Sources In Ellis Library's Special Collections

Special Collections holds items related to twentieth-century wars that can be found through our website or the Libraries' catalog.

War Poster Collection, 1913-1946.
The collection consists of posters from both World War I and World War II with tourist and other miscellaneous posters from the same periods. More than half of the posters are from countries other than the United States. French posters predominate, but there are also World War I and II posters from Belgium, Canada, England, and Italy, plus World War I posters from Germany and World War II posters from Czechoslovakia, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, and Yugoslavia. Additionally, the collection contains broadsides, banners, pamphlets, and ephemera.
Council of National Defense Collection. 1914-1919.
The Council of National Defense was created in 1916 to coordinate the U.S. war effort during World War I. Members consisted of the Secretary of War, the Secretary of the Navy, the Secretary of the Interior, the Secretary of Agriculture, the Secretary of Commerce, and the Secretary of Labor, along with a nonpartisan advisory board appointed by the President. In 1917, the Council advised states to create their own Councils of Defense. Some states also appointed separate Councils for women and African Americans. The Council was disbanded in 1921. The collection consists of publications released by the Council, including bulletins, circulars, and general letters, as well as specialized publications on topics such as war bonds and wartime cooking.
Twentieth-Century Political Pamphlet Collection.
The collection consists of ephemeral political materials distributed by and for members of national organizations and political committees. The majority of the materials relate to New Left organizations from the 1960s, but examples from the 1940s to the early 1990s are also included. Many of the materials are concerned with civil rights, anti-war protest, feminism, and economic policy. Current events in China, Cuba, Europe and the Middle East are also discussed. Organizations represented include Students for a Democratic Society, Southern Student Organizing Committee, Radical Education Project, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, and several others. The collection offers primary source material to researchers interested in the various social protest movements of the 1960s.
Samir Husni magazine collection. Series 3, Pre-1985 magazines, 1805-1984.
Samir Husni emphasized certain years while collecting for historical and personal reasons. This series includes magazines from 1919, 1942, and 1953.

Finding Primary Sources Using Standard Subject Terms

There are certain words that appear in the subject headings of items in library catalogs that designate primary sources. The most important of them is sources, but there are others.

In the simple keyword search box on the library homepage (Discover@MU), you can put such words, enclosed in "quotation marks," after SU in order to specify the SUBJECT field.

ex.: world war and France and SU "sources"

In the advanced keyword search of Discover@MU, or in any multi-line search interface, you can put your search term(s) in the top box, and in the second box, put the word(s) you're using to locate primary sources in the next box, and change the drop-down menu to SU Subject Terms.

Keywords that will help you find primary sources:

sources
correspondence
statistics
sermons
diaries
personal narratives
interviews
quotations
collections
speeches
manuscripts
maps
archives
conduct manuals

Depending on the period being studied, it can also be helpful to limit your search by publication date.

More keywords identifying primary sources in Library of Congress Subject Headings

To find the papers of a historically prominent individual, use the Advanced MERLIN Search. Use the first line to specify the author (surname first, e.g., Churchill, Winston) and the second line to specify papers in the title. You can also use the Advanced search to combine any of the above primary source oriented keywords with a particular author.

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Rachel Brekhus

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Subjects: Behavioral & Social Sciences, Black Studies, History, Humanities, Peace Studies, Philosophy, Political Science, Public Policy, Sociology