[Publib] Primary Source Documents

[Maureen K]

Publibbers . . . help!

A local middle school has assigned their eighth grade history classes to do
a project with primary source documents from the 19th century. (One of the
teachers, bless him, has come to talk to us about this assignment since we
are where he is sending all his students.) They have to find one primary
source document (around one page of a 19th century origin letter, newspaper
article, speech, etc) in their area of interest, then find related secondary
sources.

The secondary sources aren't so much of a problem, but we're having the very
devil of a time finding the primary source documents for these kids. Ours is
a pretty small library and it's not easy to find these in our books. We can
(and have) sent them to our big sister library about 20 minutes away, but of
course there will always be those who come in the night before it's due
and/or can't get up there. Some of the subjects we've had so far: slavery
(on the pro side), the Emancipation Proclamation, Alexander Graham Bell,
forensic pathology, the Women's Declaration of Independence, and the
Louisiana Purchase. As you can see, they have all sorts of different
interests!

Any great internet archives out there for the period between 1800-1899? I
have used American Memory from the Library of Congress, with spotty success,
and I also hear that the Navy website has a pretty good archive but I have
not explored it yet.

This project looks to extend through January. Any and all suggestions
heartily welcome.

Maureen
swordnpenn at gmail.com
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.webjunction.org/wjlists/publib/attachments/20061201/f364dff6/attachment.htm