Skip to Main Content

Hege Library & Learning Technologies

North Carolina Quakers, Anti-Slavery, and the Underground Railroad: Find primary sources

Friends Historical Collection resources

Finding Published Primary Sources in Print

Use the Library Catalog to locate print sources such as published letters or diaries. These sources will often be shelved along with secondary sources in the main part of the library. Key terms to use in searching to limit the search to primary documents include "correspondence" and "diaries." 

Examples:

  • The underground railroad; a record of facts, authentic narratives, letters, etc.... / by William Still
    Call Number: E450.S85 1970
     
  • Manumission Society of North Carolina.  Minutes of the N.C.Manumission Society, 1816-1834.  The University of North Carolina press, 1934.

[Quaker] F251 .J28 v.22

 

These same search methods can also be used through WorldCat to expand your search to additional publications which may be available to you through Interlibrary Loan. Limit to the book format to locate items more likely to be available to you or leave the format open to also include listings for manuscript collections with more restricted use.

Example Online Resources

Example Documents and Digitized Sources Available Online:

 

Example Full-Text Subscription Databases with Primary Sources Available to Guilford students:

 
 

African-American Newspapers : the 19th Century 
Provides full text of the entire collection of five African-American newspapers published in the 19th century.

 
 

America's Historical Newspapers via NewsBank
Early American Newspapers features cover-to-cover reproductions of hundreds of historic newspapers, providing more than one million pages as fully text-searchable facsimile images. For students and scholars of early America, this unique collection -- based largely on Clarence Brigham's "History and Bibliography of American Newspapers,1690-1820" -- offers an unprecedented look back into the extraordinary history of the United States -- the story of its people, ideals, commerce and everyday life.

 
 

Digital Library on American Slavery 
The Digital Library offers a searchable database of detailed personal information about slaves, slaveholders, and free people of color. Designed as a tool for scholars, historians, teachers, students, genealogists, and interested citizens, the site provides access to information gathered and analyzed over an eighteen-year period from petitions to southern legislatures and country courts filed between 1775 and 1867 in the fifteen slaveholding states in the United States and the District of Columbia.

 
 

New York Times Historical Newspaper via ProQuest Company
This database offers nearly three million pages of digitized full-text and full-image newspaper articles covering the entire publishing history of the newspaper, from 1851 to 2007. The full-text articles can be viewed in its original context. Researchers can locate news stories, editorials, photos, graphics, and advertisements. Also, researchers can use basic keyword, advanced, guided, and relevancy search techniques to pinpoint the information they are seeking. They can browse through issues page by page, as one would browse a printed edition. Search results lists provide bibliographic information, including date, issue, article headline, page number, and byline (where given).

 
 

North American Women's Letters and Diaries via Alexander Street Press
Over 150,000 pages of published letters and diaries plus 4,000 pages of previously unpublished materials depicting the personal experiences of hundreds of women. Contains materials from Colonial times to 1950.

 
 

Sanborn Maps North Carolina via NCLive
Sanborn Maps for the state of North Carolina provides digital access to 11,173 large-scale maps of 158 North Carolina towns and cities. Users have the ability to easily manipulate the maps, magnify and zoom in on specific sections, and compare maps from different years.

 
 

[Go to Databases (Alphabetical) for direct links and a full list of online databases at Guilford]

Searching Tips

  • Use AND to combine multiple required terms and NOT to exclude terms you do not want.Example:  Homelessness AND Poverty  (finds articles that use both terms)

Example:  Homelessness NOT New York (excludes articles that mention New York)

  • Keep track of terms that are useful.
  • Try synonyms or other related terms.

Truncate when that is an option to expand possibilities
(Example:  Child* to include both Child and Children)

Citing Archival Sources

Publications listed in this guide can be cited using your prefered format (see some options in box below) but need to includes some elements more unique to unpublished archival sources.

Unpublished sources may not have all the elements you are used to including for publications but that doesn't mean you don't include them in you list of works cited.  Citations for an archival items usually include the following:

Collection name (example:  Mary Mendenhall Hobbs Papers)

Repository name and institution (example: Friends Historical Collection, Guilford College)

Repository location (example: Greensboro, N.C.)

 

You also need to note other details, such as the item name and date, when quoting for pieces within a larger collection.  For example, the author and date of a letter.  Depending upon the particular collection, you may also need to include a series title and/or folder title.

[item], [folder title], [series title (if any)], [collection name], [accession or manuscript number], Quaker Archives, Guilford College, Greensboro, N.C.

Citing Sources in Turabian

Citation Builder (NC State University) - APA, MLA, CBE, Chicago

Print Style Guide
Kate L. Turabian’s Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations
Ref LB2369 .T8 2007 c1 and c2 (Behind the Reference Desk)

What is Easybib?

Easybib is an automatic citation generator. The free version that students are mostly famiiar with allows users to cite in MLA style only. Hege Library has acquired the Library Edition of Easybib, which offers MLA, APA, and Chicago/Turabian citation formats.

 Easybib Library Edition allows you to export citations from many library research databases and WorldCat.

 This tool is meant as a solid starting point for source citation, but does not replace manual source attribution or override professor style preference.

Access EasyBib at http://library.guilford.edu/services/instructional-tech-toolkit/.  It is available off campus via this link by logging in with your Guilford network name and password.