These are rich, comprehensive collections of primary source material, purchased by Smith College.  You will not find these sources in Google!

Primary sources:

• Are original records created at the time an historical event occurred; they may also be written well after-the-fact by participants in the event. (Think of memoirs, autobiographies, or transcriptions of recollections - i.e. oral histories.)
• Need not focus on a specific event; rather, they may more generally reflect the ideas and values of a particular time period.
• May include personal writings such as letters, diaries, journals, memoirs, and autobiographies (in manuscript or published form). They may also include newspaper articles or editorials, speeches, interviews.
• May be produced by governments and organizations, for example, the American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions, the American Red Cross, etc.
• Need not be "non-fiction" works - or written works. They may be creative works, such as poems, novels, and plays, as well as photographs, audio recordings, moving pictures, sheet music, etc.

In short, primary sources serve as the raw material to interpret the past, and when they are used along with previous interpretations by historians, they provide the resources necessary for historical research.

Adapted from Using Primary Sources on the Web, History Section, Reference and User Services Association, American Library Association, accessed 10/3/11]

For an overview of primary sources available at Smith and in the Five Colleges, consult the Find Primary Sources page.

Five College Library Catalog

Try KEYWORDS ANYWHERE to find a few relevant titles. Then track through on the Subject(s) listed on individual book descriptions to conduct a more comprehensive subject search.

As you look through lists of subjects, watch for the words "personal narratives," "diaries," "interviews," "correspondence," "pamphlets," and "sources" as part of the subject headings.

You can also search for these words, for example, palestine and (diaries or narratives or correspondence)

Other clues may be buried in the title, authorship, date of publication, etc., e.g. Sherna Gluck's An American Feminist in Palestine: The Intifada Years.

You can also look for old travel guides , combining the name of the guide (Baedecker, Thomas Cook, John Murray) and the country or region of interest, for example, (baedeker or thomas cook or john murray) and palestine.

See examples of primary source compilations in the box to the left.

If you would like to work with primary source materials in the original, consider using Smith's Sophia Smith Collection and College Archives. Both collections include manuscript material relating to missionary and overseas relief work. Examples:

• Ruth Frances Woodsmall Papers - Woodsmall was a teacher, YWCA overseas worker, and author, and the collection includes extensive source material on women in the Near and Middle East, and (to a lesser extent) Europe and the Far East gathered by Woodsmall in support of her publications.
• Hale Family Papers - Papers document four generations of Hales and their Everett, Westcott, Gilman, Hooker, Stowe, Perkins, and Beecher relatives. Topics include travel in Europe, Egypt, Palestine, and other locations.
• Pearce Family Papers - Members of the Pearce family were involved in missionary and education work in the Middle East, circa 1880s-1930s.
• YWCA - The Sophia Smith Collection has various reports from the YWCA from staffers in Beirut and Istanbul.

Consult with the collection curators for other ideas.

Mount Holyoke and Amherst colleges also have strong collections relating to missionary work in the Middle East.  Five College archival collections are listed in Asteria.  Try searching Asteria for missions or missionaries.