HIST 102: Investigating History: Serial Killers
Government Information
Publications generated by a government body, public records, reports and statistics such as census records, laws, Supreme Court decisions and treaties are excellent sources of primary materials. The John W. Wydler Government Information Depository of Hofstra University is a virtual depository designated by the U.S. Federal government. Click the link above for information about the depository, guidance for using the collection, and contact information for additional help.
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Congressional Publications
Database of congressional publications and legislative histories. Also includes member biographies, committee assignments, voting records, and financial data; and the full text of key regulatory and statutory resources.
Please note: Congressional Publications also provides access to many Congressional Research Service Reports (CRS). These reports are published to provide non-partisan research to U.S. congress. The reports are authored by experts and cover many topics. They are especially useful to students.
You can also find CRS reports here.
HathiTrust
"HathiTrust was founded in 2008 as a not-for-profit collaborative of academic and research libraries now preserving 18+ million digitized items in the HathiTrust Digital Library. We offer reading access to the fullest extent allowable by U.S. and international copyright law, text and data mining tools for the entire corpus, and other emerging services based on the combined collection." (quote taken from HathiTrust website)
Hofstra University is now a member of Hathi Trust. Please click on the LOG IN link in upper right of screen. Then choose Hofstra from the list of member libraries. Once logged in, you will be able to download and print documents.
Search Discovery and online databases
Use DISCOVERY to locate primary source materials. Click on the Books/eBooks tab to start.
Use the following databases to locate primary materials
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Accessible Archives (see History Commons) Diverse primary source materials reflecting broad views across American history and culture. These collections are encyclopedic in scope.Please note: Accessible Archives can be found under H in the A-Z list under “History Commons”.
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America: History and Life Index of literature covering the history and culture of the United States and Canada, from prehistory to the present. With indexing for 1,700 journals from as far back as 1910.
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American Periodicals Includes digitized images of the pages of American magazines and journals published from colonial days to the 20th century. Consists of works published between 1740 and 1900. Includes journals, general interest magazines, children's publications, civil war periodicals and early professional journals.
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Archives Unbound Collections cover a broad range of topics from the Middle Ages forward-from Witchcraft to World War II to twentieth-century political history. Particular strengths include U.S. foreign policy; U.S. civil rights; global affairs and colonial studies; and modern history.
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American Prison Newspapers, 1800-2020 (Open Access) American Prison Newspapers brings together hundreds of newspapers published within prisons by incarcerated people over the past 200 years. When complete, the collection will contain newspapers from prisons in every state, representing penal institutions of all kinds, including women-only institutions.
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Black Freedom Struggle in the United States Spanning 2,000 primary source documents related to African American history, from the movement to abolish slavery to the contemporary era, this collection is openly available to anyone interested in U.S. Black history, and the ways the past is reflected in current events.
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Brooklyn Eagle Digitized version of The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, which was originally published from 1841 to 1955, then revived for a short time from 1960 to 1963.
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CQ Historic Documents Published annually since 1972, the Historic Documents Series primary source documents ranging from presidential speeches, international agreements, and Supreme Court decisions to U.S. governmental reports, scientific findings, and cultural discussions.
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HeinOnline Includes more than 100 million pages of legal history available in an online, fully-searchable, image-based format. Provides comprehensive coverage from inception of more than 1,800 law and law-related periodicals. Contains the Congressional Record Bound volumes in entirety, complete coverage of the U.S. Reports back to 1754, famous world trials dating back to the early 1700′s, legal classics from the 16th to the 20th centuries, the United Nations and League of Nations Treaty Series, all United States Treaties, the Federal Register from inception in 1936, the CFR from inception in 1938, and much more.
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Historical Abstracts Covers the history of the world (excluding the United States and Canada) from 1450 to the present, indexing more than 2,300 academic historical journals in over 40 languages back to 1955.
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History Commons Diverse primary source materials reflecting broad views across American history and culture. These collections are encyclopedic in scope.
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Independent Voices Independent Voices is an open access digital collection of alternative press newspapers, magazines and journals, drawn from the special collections of participating libraries. These periodicals were produced by feminists, dissident GIs, campus radicals, Native Americans, anti-war activists, Black Power advocates, Hispanics, LGBT activists, the extreme right-wing press and alternative literary magazines during the latter half of the 20th century.
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JSTOR JSTOR is a digital library of academic journals, books, and primary sources. It provides full-text searches of almost 2,000 journals. In addition, more than 3 million of the images in Artstor are now discoverable alongside JSTOR’s vast scholarly content, providing you with primary sources and vital critical and historical background on one platform.
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Newsday Historical Coverage from 1940 to 1994.
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New York Times Historical Coverage of the New York Times from 1851 through 4 years prior to the current year.
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Salem Press Reference Shelf see the "Defining Documents" and "Milestone Documents" series.
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Student Activism (Open Access) The Student Activism collection is intended to serve as a scholarly bridge from the extensive history of student protest in the United States to the study of today's vibrant, continually unfolding actions. The collection captures the voices of students across the great range of protest, political actions, and equal-rights advocacy from the 20th and early 21st century United States. The primary sources are broad-based across time, geography, and political viewpoint — from conservative to anarchist.
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Times (London) Digital Archive Digital archive of the London Times, from 1785 to 1985.
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Women and Social Movements International A collection of primary sources that traces the global history of women’s international agendas and their influence on the course of events and shifts in attitudes that have come to define modern life.
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Women and Social Movements in the United States Scholar`s Edition Organized around the history of women in social movements in the U.S. between 1600 and 2000, this collection includes 105 document projects and archives and more than 53,000 pages of additional full-text documents, written altogether by about 2,200 primary authors. It also includes book, film, and website reviews, notes from the archives, and teaching tools.
Reveal Digital offers six collections of open-access primary source materials from libraries, museums, historical societies and individual collectors.
Special Collections and Archives
You might want to visit libraries which have collections of manuscripts, papers, organizational records, ephemera or other unpublished materials relating to the people, organizations and agencies involved in the events. These are often original, one-of-a-kind materials. Click on the link above for Hofstra University's Special Collections department.
