Maine History: Primary Sources
Archives West (Alaska, Idaho, Oregon, Utah, Montana, Washington). "Archives West provides access to descriptions of primary sources in the western United States, including correspondence, diaries or photographs. Digital reproductions of the materials are available in some cases."
Online Archive of California. "Free public access to detailed descriptions of primary resource collections maintained by more than 200 contributing institutions including libraries, special collections, archives, historical societies, and museums throughout California and collections maintained by the 10 University of California (UC) campuses." "The key is the OAC's more than 20,000 online collection guides. You can use these to browse, locate resources, or view selected items digitally — the OAC contains more th 220,000 digital images and documents — or learn how you can gain access to the physical objects." You can limit to "Online items available".
George J. Mitchell Department of Special Collections & Archives, located on the third floor of HL Library, has an extensive collection of old and rare published materials, family papers, documents and manuscripts. Many Special Collections materials are recorded in Compass, but some are not yet cataloged, so consulting the Special Collections staff and their card file is important. The Archives area contains materials relating to the history of the college and its graduates, many of whom have been prominent in U.S. history, such as George J. Mitchell and Thomas Brackett Reid. The manuscript collections are strong in the early history of Massachusetts and Maine, the Civil War and Reconstruction, 19th century American literary life, and Arctic exploration.
To find "collections of documents or historical records, including notes, correspondence, minutes, photographs, legal papers, etc., pertaining to those persons or organizations", search Compass or WorldCat (a national database of library catalog records) for a name of person, family, or corporate body; class of persons, ethnic group, type of corporate body, type of educational institution, or military service and the word "archives", Best Bet e.g.
Einstein AND archives
presidents AND archives
To find "collections of source materials of all types", search Compass or WorldCat (a national database of library catalog records) for a historical topic or system of law and the word "sources", Best Bet e.g.
antisemitism AND sources
"Soviet Union" AND sources
ArchiveGrid Best Bet
includes collection descriptions from WorldCat bibliographic records and from finding aids harvested from ArchiveGrid contributors' websites as well as a list of archives.
Search OCLC WorldCat (Manuscript materials) is a front-end for searching archival and manuscript collections in WorldCat.
National union catalog of manuscript collections (NUCMC) (in print and online via HathiTrust). The items in NUCMC have not all been entered into WorldCat.
Maine Historical Societies / Historical Records Repositories. Maintained by the Maine State Archives.
Directory of historical organizations in the United States and Canada Best Bet
Main Ref E172 .D5 15th 2002
Although dated, it is still useful for finding historical societies.
Using Archives: A Guide to Effective Research, Society of American Archivists
Try to use Google to search for a historical society in a particular city or town, county, or state.
Google search on something like this:
[YOUR TOPIC] AND ("digital archive" OR "digital library" OR "digital collection" OR "digital repository" OR "virtual archive" OR "virtual library" OR "virtual collection" OR "online archive" OR "online library" OR "online collection") Best Bet
(Source: Search string suggested by Archive Discovery: A How-To Guide, Sam Houston State University.)
Please consult with a research librarian about how to find other primary sources.
American library directory; a classified list of libraries in the United States and Canada, with personnel and statistical data
Main Reference Z731.A53
Organized by state/province then by city and library name. Includes academic, public, government, and specialized libraries. Included are over 27,100 libraries in the U.S. and 3249 in Canada.
libraries.org Best Bet
Included are 184,328 libraries in 175 different countries; 143,322 of those are in the U.S. Also includes a directory of Public Libraries in the United States, United States Presidential Libraries, and Public Libraries in the United Kingdom.
Social Media Directory of Academic Libraries
"The Directory includes active links to social media accounts of academic libraries across the globe and includes a multitude of platforms. The site also provides contact information for each social media manager for every library in the directory. All of the links and contact information are presented in tables which are sort-able and include filters to limit by Country and State."
