The Primary Source Hunt: OAIster
Lura Sanborn May 20th, 2010
Are you too looking for primary sources? Most Humanities V teachers are requiring at least two for completion of a successful research paper. If you’ve looked in all the usual places (such as those listed here in our primary source round-up), yet still aren’t finding quite what you want, consider OAIster.
What is it? OAIster is an online catalog of digitized sources. It is made available by OCLC, a company that provides many library-related services.
It might help to compare this to Ohrstrom Library’s catalog. The Ohrstrom Library catalog searches through the records of our 70,000 print titles. OAIster searches through the records of 23 Million digitized sources from over 1,000 contributors.
What might you find?
- A copy of Redon’s journal, contributed by the Bibliotheque Nationale de France.
- Correspondence from Sigmund Freud to Albert Einstein regarding war contributed by I-Revues.
- Sanitary Statistics of Native Colonial Schools and Hospitals by Florence Nightingale contributed by University of California Libraries.
- An image of an Alice in Wonderland Float, from Mardi Gra 1938 contributed by the Indiana University Digital Library Program (see image above).
- An abstract of a report from the National Program for Inspection of Non-Federal Dams regarding the St. Pauls School Dam contributed by the Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC) Repository.
Is it hard to use? The search function is very straightforward, offering a basic search or advanced search. As always, if you would like a little help using this resource please be in touch!
Consider the Source: A Critical Guide to 100 Prominent News and Information Sites on the Web by James F. Broderick & Darren W. Miller, Information Today, 2007.
