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History Senior Seminar

History research resources available to Pepperdine University students.

Searching for Primary Sources at the Library

 

By using a proper search strategy, the library catalog is an effective tool for lcoating books that are primary sources. WorldCat Local will search for items at the Pepperdine University Libraries and over 70,000 libraries worldwide.

Search by people who witnessed or participated in an event:

  • Harrry Truman
  • Leon Trotsky
  • Jackie Robinson
  • Bartolome De Las Casas
  • Jesse Owens
  • Saint Augustine

The Library of Congress assigns subject headings that are useful for restricting your search to primary sources:

  • correspondence
  • diaries
  • early works to 1800
  • interviews
  • pamphlets
  • personal narratives
  • sources
  • biography (An autobiography is a primary source.Check to see if the author's name also appears in the subject field.)
  • oral history

Please note: books with the phrase "documentary history" in the title often contain primary sources.

You can also restrict your search to books that were written at the time of the historical event to limit your results to primary sources.

Archival Collections at Pepperdine

Pepperdine University makes primary sources available for research in the Special Collections and University Archives, which is located in Payson Library. The archival collections document the history of Pepperdine University, Malibu, the Churches of Christ, film and television, and several other topics. The rare book collections cover many topics and eras.

The Michael J. Marlatt Collection of Documents on Colonial America is currently on loan to Pepperdine University and available for use in Payson Library. Many of the materials have also been scanned and are available in Pepperdine Digital Collections.

Pepperdine's archival collections of original documents can be searched on the Pepperdine page in the Online Archive of California. The book collections can be searched in the library catalog. Many of the archival collections have been digitized and are available in the Pepperdine Digital Collections.

If you would like to use the materials onsite, please contact Chris.Miehl@pepperdine.edu or Bailey.Badger@pepperdine.edu to schedule an appointment. The materials are usually available for research Monday to Friday, 9am-5pm. Please see this website for more details: https://library.pepperdine.edu/collections/special-collections/.