National History Day

Lately we've had a lot of fun working with students on National History Day projects.  This year the theme is "Revolution, Reaction, Reform in History".  The program emphasizes using both primary and secondary resources.  The Society of American Archivists (SAA) has created a toolkit on using archives to locate primary sources.  The toolkit offers the following definition,  "Primary sources are unique materials that are created at the time of a historical event that can serve as proof of historical facts. Primary sources are unfiltered materials; the information is not interpreted by someone who was not a witness to the event. Primary sources provide a window into the past. How do we know about events that have passed? Through the primary sources that participants left behind."  The toolkit also contains tips on research, links to online primary sources and other information. 

In addition to archives, government information often contains a rich array of primary sources.  Here are some of the projects students have worked on and the tools we have suggested:

• Opium Trade--British House of Commons Parliamentary Papers
• Cuban Missile Crisis--Foreign Relations of the United States and the Digital National Security Archive
• Sand Creek Massacre--US Congressional Serial Set
• The Great Depression--American Memory from the Library of Congress

Children waiting to fill pails with soup, 1940.  American Memory

This is just the tip of the iceberg.  Check out our page on Historic and Archival Documents.  Many of the resources are freely available, but some are only available on campus.