MIDCAT, the library's online catalog, lists all the materials held by the Middlebury College Libraries. It includes both primary sources (government documents, books with collected documents, memoirs, etc.) and secondary sources (that analyze primary sources and events). It also lists non-print items, such as videos, etc.
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MIDCAT
Search in MIDCAT by subject and/or keyword. Choice of terminology is the key to good results so consider asking a reference librarian for help and/or using the Library of Congress Subject Headings volumes.
Make a list of useful subject headings to use in other library catalogs.
To find primary works, consider using some of the following terms in your search (look for these as sub-headings on subject searches or use these in combination with other terms in a keyword search):
| Sources (used for collections of primary sources) |
Letters |
| Biography (used for both biography & autobiography) |
Correspondence |
| Personal Narratives |
Diaries |
| Slave Narratives or Slaves' Writings |
Interviews |
| Notebooks, Sketchbooks |
Archives |
| Manuscripts |
Oral History (used for the technique, but some collections are occassionally listed as well as bibliographies of them) |
| Papers |
Speeches |
Example keyword search:
Latin America and history and (letters or correspondence or narratives)
The above search finds:
The Mexico Reader: History, Culture, Politics
" An interdisciplinary anthology that includes many primary resources never before published in English" - publisher annotation.
Try doing a general subject search for a country or area followed by the word history:
Browse the resulting subdivisions and look for the sub-headings listed above, especially --sources:
Bibliographies: To find both primary and secondary sources, try looking for bibliographies by searching in keyword or look for it as a sub-heading (see 3rd item in image above).
ex.
brazil and bibliography. If you need more books (and can wait for Interlibrary Loan):
Dissertation Abstracts
Index with abstracts of Ph.D. dissertations and masters' theses published from 1851 to current. These have to be borrowed via InterLibrary Loan or purchased. See a librarian if you need help.
LibWeb: Library Servers via WWW
If you want to search a particular Library's online catalog, use LibWeb to find the link.
NExpress
Use the 
button in Midcat to search for and request items from a consortia of 6 other northeastern libraries, Middlebury borrowers can also visit these libraries and check out items directly. These libraries are: Williams, Bates, Bowdoin, Wellesley, Colby, and Northeastern University. See the NExpress page for full details.
WorldCat
Use this union catalog of over 40 million books, documents, reports, and media from libraries worldwide to identify books to request via InterLibrary Loan. If we don't own the book and you want to borrow it from another library, click on the ILL icon from the record. (You must have an ILL account set-up first to use this feature).