PRIME SOURCES FOR PRIMARY SOURCES

AND OTHER TOOLS

8TH GRADE U.S. HISTORY PROJECTS

Links to major databases:

  • Choose your database
  • Username: austinacad
  • Password: ktwelve

EBSCO

  • StudentResearchCenter
  • Check only the box for Primary Sources to begin your search. Later you can add others to search for secondary sources

NetTrekker: (High School)

  • Famous People
  • U.S. History: Choose Time Frame – Topic – Look at all links on the page!

Citation Machine: 5.0: Notice!!! As of April 2009, MLA has made some significant changes in the format for its citation style. For this project, you need to use Version 5.0 of Citation Machine. Version 4.0 is the default.

  • Choose the Citation Machine link from the library homepage
  • Find the small red link at the top of the page that says Version 5.0. Click on it.
  • Use the appropriate template to create your full citation for your Works Cited page
  • Click on “more” if you don’t find the type of template that you need
  • Fill in the information requested for parenthetical citations to determine what needs to go inside the parentheses

RESEARCH AND PRIMARY SOURCE RESOURCE GUIDE

What Are Primary Sources?

The Library of Congress defines primary sources as actual records that have survived from the past as opposed to secondary sources which are accounts of the past created by people writing about events sometime after they happened.

Examples of primary sources include:

  • Diaries
  • Speeches
  • Interviews
  • Autobiographies
  • Manuscripts
  • Letters
  • Personal narratives
  • Pamphlets
  • Photographs, paintings
  • Clothing, jewelry, archaeological artifacts
  • Travel and eyewitness accounts
  • Government documents
  • Personal papers
  • Memoirs
  • Minutes of meetings
  • Newspaper articles contemporary to event or person

Examples of secondary sources include:

  • Textbooks
  • Magazine articles
  • Encyclopedias

Primary sources come in different formats including: Personal correspondence or papers, and manuscripts in archives and libraries reprinted in published sources such as books, collections of letters, diaries, and memoirs.

SUGGESTED LINKS: (These are from Mrs. Pershey and Mr. Thompson from earlier in the year)

National Archives

Library of Congress

Digitized Primary American History Sources

Public Broadcasting Service

Avalon Project (Documents)

OldRedMuseum

SixthFloorMuseum

LBJ Library

George Bush Library

EastTexasOilMuseum

TexasState Historical Association

Other websites:

American Slave Narratives

Colonial Williamsburg

Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History

Government Printing Office Access

Supreme Court Decisions (1937-1975)

Teacher Access to Court Opinions (TACO) University of Houston

Texas History and Culture

Turn of the Century

University of OklahomaCollege of Law: Chronology of U.S. History Documents

Battle Lines: Letters from America’s Wars

Additional Recommended Websites: Added for this project

New York Public Library Digital

National Archives

100 Milestones

.gov/content.php?flash=true&page=milestone

National Park Service

American Memories Movies (Library of Congress)

America’s Story

Census Browser

United Streaming: Ask Your Teacher

Citation Guidelines

Works Cited Page:

  • Organize citations alphabetically by the first major word in the citation (either author’s last name or title of book or web page).
  • Do not separate sources by type.
  • Double space between each line
  • Place the first line of a citation next to the left hand margin. Indent additional lines of a citation 5 spaces

Example:

Works Cited

Burns, Ken. The Lewis and Clark Expedition. Boston: Random

House, 2000.

"Kit Carson." American Experience. 10 Oct 2003. Public

Broadcast System. 7 Apr 2009

<

Parenthetical Citations: (Author’s last name and page number for books. Title of web page in quotes if no author is given for a web page)
  • Direct quote that is blended within the paragraph and is one sentence long: Close the quote, insert parenthesis, and then add the period.

Example: The Lewis and Clark Expedition paved the way for future exploration of the West. “The Expedition of the Corps of Discovery shaped a crude route to the waters of the Pacific and marked an initial pathway for the new nation to spread westward from ocean to ocean, fulfilling what would become to many Americans an obvious destiny” (Perry 15).

  • Direct quote that is 2 or more sentences long: Indent the quote, enclose in quotation marks, follow with parenthesis, close with a period. Example: The success of the Lewis and Clark Expedition would far exceed Thomas Jefferson’s expectations and would have a lasting effect American history.

“Over the next two centuries the new Americans and many immigrants would wash across the central and western portions of what would eventually become the contiguous 48 United States. This wave of development would significantly transform virgin forests and grasslands into a landscape of cities, farms, and harvested forests, displacing fauna such as the buffalo and squeezing the Indians who survived onto reservations” (Perry 15).

  • Paraphrasing information that is not common knowledge still requires parenthetical documentation in this type of a research paper. Insert the parenthetical citation at the end of the last sentence in the passage that comes from a particular source, then enclose with a period. Every time you switch information sources, you must parenthetically cite the new source at the end of that portion of the entry.

Example:

One of the primary goals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition was to establish diplomatic relations with the Indians. To make this endeavor more likely to succeed, Jefferson provided the expedition with many gifts to bestow upon the Indians and to honor their chiefs (Perry 20). In addition, William Clark’s skills in mapping and surveying were put to an extreme test, as it was primarily his job to provide cartographic records for the entire expedition. The astonishing accuracy of those maps, given the tools of the day, is a credit to his skill and dedication to his craft (“Westward Expansion”).