Research Base Camp
Are you stuck? Whether you are at the beginning, middle or end of your research, Research Base Camp can help! These brief videos will provide you with key concepts in research and presentation skills.
Understanding the Research Process • Searching • Using What You've Found • Citing Your Work • Presenting Your Research
Health Sciences Archives
Historical & Current Newspapers
- Historical New York Times This link opens in a new window
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Search and browse the New York Times from 1851 until 2017. - The Times Digital Archive This link opens in a new window
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More than 200 years of The Times of London, one of the most highly regarded resources for 19th and 20th-Century history detailing every complete page of every issue from 1785. - Early American Newspapers, Series 1: From Colonies to Nation This link opens in a new window
A full-text, searchable database of over 700 early U.S. newspapers from 1690-1876. - African American Newspapers: The 19th Century This link opens in a new window
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Contains full text and images of African American newspapers from the 19th century (1827-1868), including Freedoms Journal, The North Star and Frederick Douglass Papers among others. - ProQuest US Newsstream This link opens in a new window
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Contains coverage of over 1,000 news sources including The New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post, plus other important U.S., international and minority interest papers. - News (Gale OneFile) This link opens in a new window
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Search more than 1,000 current newspapers for full-text articles. - Independent Voices This link opens in a new window
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A digitial collection of alternative press periodicals provided by the Center for Research Libraries.
Evaluating Primary Sources
A primary source can tell you a lot about a specific event, person, or period but they must still be checked for relevance and legitimacy.
Consider what your sources reveal and what they don't.
- Purpose and motives of the author
- Why do you think the author wrote this?
- Who is the author and what might be his/her place in society?
- What evidence in the source tells you this?
- Argument and strategy used to achieve these goals
- What kind of case is the author trying to make?
- Is the author credible? Why?
- Who was the intended audience at the time this was created? Was it meant to be public or private? If so, whom was it meant for? For example, a letter to from a soldier to a mother or wife might mask the atrocities of war. How might the content differ if he wrote to a father or brother instead?
- Presuppositions and values (both in the text, and our own)
- What presumptions and preconceptions do you (as a reader) bring to this text? For example, are there parts that you find objectionable, racist, sexist, but readers of that time period might have found acceptable?
- How might the difference between our modern values and those of the author influence the way you understand the text?
- Epistemology
- What does this text tell you without outright telling you?
- How might this text support an argument you've found in a secondary source?
- Relate your source to other texts
- What patterns/ideas regularly appear throughout your sources?
- What major differences appear in them?
- Can these be supported by other primary or secondary sources?