Research Guides: HST 311: Tea in History and Art: Primary Sources

Tips for Locating Primary Sources

Choose historically appropriate keywords. For example, use "Great War" instead of "World War I" to locate documents discussing the war during and just after it occurred. You may also consider different terms that might have been used to describe the same event from opposing sides or perspectives. Searching for the names of particular people or places may also be effective.

Think about what types of primary sources might have been produced that would be relevant to your topic; think also about which persons or organizations might have produced materials. Some possible types of sources:

Books	Photographs and images
Magazine and newspaper articles	Cartoons and advertisements
Diaries and journals	Movies, videos, and DVDs
Memoirs and autobiographies	Audio recordings
Interviews	Public opinion polls
Letters	Fiction
Speeches	Research data and statistics
Documents produced by organizations	Documents produced by government agencies, including congressional hearings and census records

To locate potential primary sources in the library's online catalog, Primo, look for subject headings that contain terms such as diaries, letters, correspondence, autobiography, interviews, or personal narratives following the main heading.

Primary Source Collections

PRIMARY SOURCES ON TEA AND ART

Artstor This link opens in a new window
ArtStor Digital Library provides high-resolution images from outstanding international museums, photographers, libraries, photo archives, and artists and artists' estates for educational and scholarly use.
Global Commodities This link opens in a new window
This resource focuses on the following fifteen significant commodities whose stories are often intertwined: chocolate, coffee, cotton, fur, oil, opium, porcelain, silver and gold, spices, sugar, tea, timber, tobacco, wheat, and wine and spirits.
Making of the Modern World This link opens in a new window
Digital facsimile images of primary sources that track the development of the modern, western world through the lens of trade and wealth from the period 1450-1914. Full-text searching across works in the areas of history, political science, social conditions, technology and industry, economics, area studies and more. Coverage: 1450-1914

PRIMARY SOURCES ON AMERICAN HISTORY

Colonial America This link opens in a new window
Colonial America includes Modules I-V . Sourced from The National Archives UK, Colonial America offers access to thousands of documents on North America from the 1600s and 1700's. Use the Search Directories feature to identify keywords related to your topic.
Early American Imprints, Series I & II (combined) This link opens in a new window
Contains virtually every book, pamphlet and broadside published in America during the 17th, 18th, and early 19th centuries.

PRIMARY SOURCES ON BRITISH HISTORY

Colonial America This link opens in a new window
Colonial America includes Modules I-V . Sourced from The National Archives UK, Colonial America offers access to thousands of documents on North America from the 1600s and 1700's.
Defining Gender This link opens in a new window
Provides access to original British source material related to gender, including discussions of manners, etiquette, customs, etc. Use the Popular Searches feature to identify keywords related to your topic.

ADDITIONAL PRIMARY SOURCE COLLECTIONS

HathiTrust Digital Library This link opens in a new window
HathiTrust Digital Library is a digital preservation repository and highly functional access platform. It provides long-term preservation and access services for public domain and in-copyright content from a variety of sources, including Google, the Internet Archive, Microsoft, and in-house partner institution initiatives. Log in as a WFU user to get access to downloadable PDFs of public domain items. Coverage: Varies