Historical Research: East Asian Civilization

Please note: You will not need to research primary sources for today's session in the library classroom. However, you may want to look back at these links later, if you need primary sources for your paper. 

Primary sources are the documents, artifacts and other material that was made at the time you are studying, or by people who had first-hand knowledge of the event. Historians use primary sources as their main source of information when they are doing original research. Ideal primary sources would be created at the same time as the period you are studying and raise interesting questions that you can analyze in your writing. 

• Collection of Links to Databases of Primary Sources on China, Japan, Korea and Taiwan
  This guide, maintained by the University of Washington Libraries, provides links to recommended primary source databases on East Asian history. Please note that the links with a "lock" symbol next to them are subscription-based (available only to U.W. students); but all those without a "lock" should be free to use. 
• ​Google Books
  This database is enormous. It includes millions of printed books, magazines and other sources with vast numbers of potential sources, mostly in English and other European languages. Tips:
  • This works very well if you are looking for sources printed IN ENGLISH between about 1800-1923. It works less well outside of that date range because of copyright limitations on more recent material, and because older rare books are not as commonly included. 
  • Enter keywords such as "Rape of Nanking" IN QUOTES to search for that exact phrase. Because Google Books has billions of pages within it, using proper names and places is often important for getting good results. 
  • Important note regarding searching by date of publication: There is a way to limit by date (Go to Tools > [Change "Any Time" to your date range] ... but the date search for some reason excludes hundreds of items that should turn up for your time period. To get around flaws in the date-based search, you can instead SORT by date, and then skip through the results until you find relevant books from the time period you are searching for. 
• Hathi Trust
  Recommended. This is similar to Google Books: It includes millions of printed books, magazines, and other sources, mostly from about 1800-1923. It is somewhat easier to use than Google Books. The date searching, for example, actually works!