Finding print primary sources with OBIS & Summon
Many useful primary sources will be collected in print or ebook compilations, with several texts or images on a related topic collected in a single volume. The Towns of Italy in the Later Middle Ages is an example of such a source.
The Towns of Italy in the Later Middle Ages by ISBN: 0719052041Publication Date: 2000-05-25The towns of Italy in the later middle ages presents over one hundred fascinating documents, carefully structured around the crisis of the fourteenth century and arranged in contrasting groups of texts. By connecting documents in translation to recent scholarship and debates, it addresses five key areas of medieval urban history: the physical environment, civic religion, economy, society and politics.
Subjects that are useful for finding primary sources in OBIS and Summon:
- Sources
- Correspondence
- Diaries
- Interviews
- Pictoral Works
- Maps
- Early Works to 1800
- Medieval
- Centuries (e.g. 11th century)
- Exhibition
Summon indexes the full text of some (but not all) of our print sources. Therefore it can be useful to combine a subject search for subject headings associated with primary sources with a keyword search for more specific concepts. The proximity search can help ensure that multiple concepts are addressed in the same text inside a collection.
To find books where the word city and the word food appear within 100 words of each other, you would use the following search in Summon:
- "city food"~100
Databases
- AM-Explorer This link opens in a new windowAccess millions of pages of primary source collections spanning content from the 15th-21st centuries.
- Early English Books Online This link opens in a new windowSearchable scans of nearly all existing English books up to the year 1700; this collection now contains over 100,000 of over 125,000 titles listed in Pollard Redgrave's Short-Title Catalogue (1475-1640) and Wing's Short-Title Catalogue (1641-1700) and their revised editions, as well as the Thomason Tracts (1640-1661) collection and the Early English Books Tract Supplement. Dates of Coverage: 1473-1700
- Gallica Digital Library
Over a million documents accessible for free: Books, Manuscripts, Maps, Images, Newspapers, Magazines, Periodicals, Sound records, Music, Scores, e-Books.
- Europeana This link opens in a new windowA digital library of images, texts, audio, and video from Europe's museums, archives, and libraries.
- Eight Centuries This link opens in a new windowA vast index to British and American periodicals, newspapers, books, and other sources documenting the 19th century. Dates of Coverage: 1300-1930
- HathiTrust Digital Library This link opens in a new windowHathiTrust is a repository of digital content from 50 research libraries, including electronic versions of nearly 8 million books at the time of writing.
Note: As of May 2023, Oberlin is a HathiTrust member. Oberlin students, faculty, and staff can access member features by clicking on the “LOG IN” button, choosing “Oberlin College and Conservatory”, and using their ObieID to authenticate. - JSTOR Images This link opens in a new windowOver 1 million images selected to support research and reaching in art history from pre-historical to contemporary media.