Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Tuesday's Tip: Check Out the University of Idaho's Repositories of Primary Sources

This week's Tuesday's Tip is:  Use the University of Idaho's Repositories of Primary Sources website to help you find unique documents and images.

The University of Idaho has created links to many repositories that hold primary source material (documents, manuscripts, photographs, artifacts, etc.).  It is called the Repositories of Primary Sources.  Here is the home page:



There are links on the home page for the "State, Province, Country Index," an "Integrated Index List," and for world regions (e.g., "Western United States and Canada").

The "State, Province, Country Index" is a list of states, provinces and countries with a link to the list of repositories in that entity:


Clicking on one of the links on the list above takes the user to the appropriate world region.

The "Western United States and Canada" region list looks like this:


Scrolling down, I found the "California" list:


I perused the list for California, and saw the San Diego State University Library listed (the link on the Idaho page doesn't work - the correct link is http://library.sdsu.edu/):


From this website, I  can check the catalog for online digital archives that interest me, and I can check to see if this repository has archival materials that interest me - photograph collections, local historical records, etc.

Most of the repositories listed on the Repositories of Primary Sources website are places that genealogists and family historians don't often think about visiting to perform research.  However, they may hold key resources that can help you solve your family history mystery or research puzzle.

I need to do more browsing through some of the repositories listed on the Idaho website.  This is an easy entree to a vast world of research materials that genealogists and family historians should review and visit for ancestral records and images.

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Copyright (c) 2013, Randall J. Seaver


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