A year ago, Mike, a student, asked me for help finding information about York, William Clark's slave and member of the Lewis and Clark expedition. He posed an interesting question: what was the reaction of the many Native Americans who had never seen a black man before? In reading a history of the Lewis and Clark Trail he learned that one of Clark's letters helped describe the answer he was looking for. Thus began a three-day search to obtain a copy of the letter. He discovered it is at the Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation. Fortunately, the letter was reproduced in a small publication of the Foundation called We Proceeded On. The student was then able to obtain the article through interlibrary loan.

More often teachers ask students to find primary documents as part of a research topic, rather than write a paper about a particular document. The topic "write a paper about the Magna Carta" requires far less effort than "using primary source material, support or refute the claim that European explorers thought Native Americans were inferior." Here students must think critically; it requires interpretive skills such as reasoning and deduction and knowledge of context and point of view to understand historical events through documents. Rather than reading about someone else's interpretation of how and why something happened, students try to find out what happened, and then make their own conclusions. This process of discovery is a rich and rewarding way for students to understand history. A year later, Mike is still talking about Lewis and Clark.

School librarians play an important role in this process. Not only do we help students find their sources, but also as teachers we can use primary source documents to help them learn information literacy skills: effectively using, synthesizing, interpreting, and evaluating sources. "Primary research" only begins with finding primary documents. As in Mike's case, research often begins with using reference and secondary sources to identify original source material. It may then lead to finding census records on microfilm, or using a finding aid at the Massachusetts Historical Society to find a letter written by John Adams in the Adams Papers. It's detective work. History now becomes alive through its own investigation.

I've found that once you've identified a particular document for research, a well-written online search should bring it up: (try +"Thomas Jefferson" +"drawing of a macaroni machine" in Google!). For this reason its actually more efficient to try it in this manner rather than to wade through some laundry list of links to primary documents on the Internet (which probably doesn't include the macaroni machine!).

That being said, if your online search fails, it's well worth considering doing a site-search through large primary source collections such as the Library of Congress's American Memory, the National Archives, or the Making of America. These databases are large enough that it's worth using their site-based search features; a general Internet search (even using your favorite search engine) might not find your document. For the most part, we've only linked "content" sites such as these on our primary documents page (see link below).

A very effective laboratory for primary research at our schools is the Beverly Educational Archives, located in a room adjacent to the high school library. This collection includes documents of administrative and social value to Beverly Schools (such as school committee reports and student publications) dating as far back as 1768. Classes in both the History and English departments are using the archives for research. Their experience with using these local primary documents is that history becomes even more immediate and tangible. Students understand the larger context of world events through local history.

Links:

Beverly Educational Archives: http://www.primaryresearch.org/archives

Primary Documents Links: http://www.bhsonline.org/library/primdocuments.htm

American Memory (Library of Congress): http://memory.loc.gov

National Archives: http://www.nara.gov

Making of America (University of Michigan Collection): http://moa.umdl.umich.edu/

Making of America (Cornell Collection): http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/moa/

(Editor's Note: Background for this article can be found in the June 2002 NMRLS Newsletter athttp://www.nmrls.org/news/june02.shtml#profile in an article by Tom Scully, the Director of Beverly Public Library. The Archives manifests its mission by collaborating with local historical organizations and libraries.

"Profiles" wanted! These articles are submitted to the Editor. The only criterion is that the article includes at least one type of collaboration between 2 different institutions. Also, that the submitter be willing to be contacted for more information.)