One of the best collections of primary sources available to you at Wooster are the physical stacks at Andrews Library (and in the wider CONSORT system). Unfortunately, there is no button that allows you to limit your catalogue search just to "primary sources." That is because the very definition of what is a primary source can change drastically depending on your historical question.
A great example of this might be Robert Louis Stephenson's novel Treasure Island, an adventure story first published in 1882. The story itself is set in the early 1700s, but, because it was written more than a hundred years later, it would not be a good primary source to learn about piracy or treasure hunting from that period.
However, many historians and scholars of literature have produced excellent research that uses Treasure Island instead as a primary source that offers insight into how people in the 1880s thought about adventures and maritime exploration.
When looking for primary sources, then, you are usually looking for material that was produced in the historical period that you are studying or by someone who was there.
History materials are found in the following areas of the library:
Woo Reference
Woo Main
Woo Oversize
Woo Periodicals
History materials will be in the C (Auxilary Sciences of History), D (World History), E & F (History of the Americas) classification areas. Follow the links to see a detailed outline of the Library of Congress Classification System, as well as maps and floorplans for our libraries.
Search the CONSORT CATALOG for items held by CONSORT Libraries. CONSORT is a shared catalog for the following schools: The College of Wooster, Denison University, Kenyon College, and Ohio Wesleyan University. You can request books held in other CONSORT libraries directly through the CONSORT system. Normally, these items take an average of 2-4 working days to be delivered to our library. You will receive a message on your @wooster.edu account to let you know when items have arrived. They will be placed on hold for you at the Andrews Circulation Desk.
Search the OhioLINK CATALOG for items held by OhioLINK libraries. You can request books held in other OhioLINK libraries directly through the OhioLINK system. Normally, these items take an average of 2-4 working days to be delivered to our library. You will receive a message on your @wooster.edu account to let you know when items have arrived. They will be placed on hold for you at the Andrews Circulation Desk.
Most of the materials in Wooster's Special Collections department can be found by searching the CONSORT catalogue. However, these collections are located in a Closed Stack area of the library and must viewed, by appointment, in the Reading Room located on Lower 1 of Andrews Library. This is an excellent place to look for primary sources, especially on topics related to local history or to the history of the college. It also includes specialized collections, like the Notestein Collection (political pamphlets from 17th-century England), the Mother, Home, and Heaven collection (etiquette and morality in 19th- and 20th-century America), and correspondence from Wooster alumni and local families who served as missionaries around the world.
For a detailed description of the collections held by the college, review the list of subject collections:
Once you have found a potentially useful source in the CONSORT catalog, a great way to broaden your search is to scroll through the catalog record to the Subject headings. These subjects form part of an organization system maintained by the Library of Congress, allowing books on related topics to be easily cross-referenced. Treasure Island, for instance, connects to nine subjects including "Sea Stories," "Action and Adventure Fiction," and "Pirates--Fiction."
Click on a Subject and it will take you to a list indicating how many books in our collections fall under that category. Clicking on the subject a second time will then bring up a the full list of those books. We currently have 53 items in the CONSORT catalog that fall under the subject of "Pirates--Fiction."