LibGuides: HIS 444 History of American Education (Gedge): Finding primary sources

Book primary sources

WCU Library Catalog

Use this to search for both older print books in our collection and digitized ebooks from some of our primary source databases.

Catalog search tip for primary sources:

After you search, find the date limiter in the left-hand column to set to your time period of interest.
You may also want to limit specifically to Books under Source Types.
If you see a print book you would like to use, see my instructions for getting print books.
Sadly, because of limited access to the library this spring 2020, we can not provide access to any books that are marked as being in our Special Collections.

19th Century Schoolbooks
A collection of scanned 19th Century schoolbooks from the University of Pittsburgh Libraries.
HathiTrust
Hathi Trust is a very large digital repository of scanned books and government publications from many libraries. I've had good luck with it the past, particularly for finding specific acts/policies, like this 1834 act establishing a public school system in PA: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc2.ark:/13960/t9d50vx43&view=1up&seq=4

HathiTrust search tips:

1) On the main search page, switch your search to the Catalog only (default is Full Text), but leave Full View checked. That means you will only get results that have the full book scanned, but you won't be searching the full text of everything (which is very messy!).
2) You can limit to a specific date range and/or source type after your initial search (left-hand column)
3) You can also search for a specific publication by name, if you have come across something in your research.

Google Books
A lot of the Google Books content is also in HathiTrust, but if you feel more comfortable with the Google interface, you can search it directly.

Google Books search tips:

To search for primary sources, you first need to access the tools. See the image below. After you select tools consider altering the following three.

Any books-- set to Free Google Ebooks
Any document-- you can look at books, magazines, or newspapers
Any time-- set a custom date range to match your topic

Articles and more....

Some of the following databases are dedicated to specific types of articles (scholarly, magazine, or newspapers). Others are what I call hodgepodge databases-- they have a wide range of source types including books, articles, and ephemera. Keep an eye on the date ranges for each-- some cover very specific periods.

America's Historical Imprints This link opens in a new window
Date range 1639-c.1900.
This interface cross searches three different collections: American Broadsides & Ephemera; Early American Imprints, Series I: Evans; and Early American Imprints, Series II: Shaw-Shoemaker.

Search tips for America's Historical Imprints:

This database has some great browse features under the search box!

genre will allow you to find specialized content like: books for boys, books for girls, readers, and schoolbooks
subjects-- select education from the list and browse through the categories
Place of publication-- great if your research has a regional focus

JSTOR This link opens in a new window
Some journals in JSTOR have full text going back to the late 19th century! So you can find what scholars were saying about education throughout the 20th century.
Just remember to set the date range to match the time period you are researching.
Historical Newspapers This link opens in a new window
Find news articles and editorials discussing a wide range of education topics.
Includes the following papers:
-Chicago Tribune, 1849-1992
-New York Times, 1857-2008
-Philadelphia Tribune, 1912-2001
-Wall Street Journal, 1889-1994
American Periodicals Series Online 1740-1900 This link opens in a new window
Full-text of historical general magazines, literary and professional journals, and children's and women's magazines. The full page images preserve original typography and graphic elements, including drawings.

HIS 444 History of American Education (Gedge)

General tips for finding primary resources

Book primary sources

Articles and more....