Collins Memorial Library: STS 301 : Technology & Culture: Primary Sources

Primary Sources Online

LHL Digital Collections
Digitized collections focusing on the history of science and engineering, including astronomy and natural history.
Segre Visual Archives: 30,000 photos of scientists
More than 30,000 historical digital images, photographs, slides, lithographs, engravings, drawings and other visual materials. The collection is richest in portraits and snapshots of modern American physicists, astronomers and geophysicists but includes many other scientists as well as photos and illustrations of laboratories, telescopes, accelerators and other instruments, objects and places
EPACT: Scientific instruments of Medieval & Renaissance Europe
Epact is an electronic catalogue of medieval and renaissance scientific instruments from four European museums: the Museum of the History of Science, Oxford, the Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza, Florence, the British Museum, London, and the Museum Boerhaave, Leiden. Together, these museums house the finest collections of early scientific instruments in the world.

ARTstor
This database of artworks and artifacts provides high quality images from all over the world.

Living Computer Museum
The Living Computer Museum collection presents the meaningful milestones in the evolution of computers and how people use them
Thomas Edison Papers Digital Edition
A direct link to the searchable digital archive of the Thomas Edison papers which have been archived. Search the archive by selecting a search method from the box on the right.
Royal Society: Trailblazing
"Showcases sixty fascinating and inspiring articles selected from an archive of more than 60,000 published by the Royal Society between 1665 and 2010."

Primary Sources for STS

When you're looking for primary sources in STS, think carefully about what you're looking for to determine the best place to start. Are you looking for:

Journal articles published by participants who created or used the technology?
Popular press articles reporting on the technology?
Personal papers, diaries, memoirs, or letters of individuals who used the technology?
Advertisements for the technology?
Artifacts or physical examples of the technology, or photographs or video of folks using it?

What you're looking for will affect where you look, and while some sources may be difficult to find (like uncollected personal papers), others may be surprisingly easy (like published journal articles).

Remember that museums and historical societies often have digital collections of documents and artifacts that can be accessed online.

Historical Advertising Sources

Advertisements can give you a special window into technology and culture.You can find ad sources on the web, but you can also browse physical copies of some of our journals.

Ad*Access is an online archive from Duke University whihch provides scans of ads from about 1911-1957. Ads focus on beauty and hygiene, radio, televsion, transportation, and World War II.

Emergence of Advertising in America is also from Duke, and takes the focus back to 1850-1920. Search or browse by company, product, date, and more.

Medicine and Madison Avenue covers medical advertisements from 1850-1920.

Adflip a database of ads from the 1940s to the present. Requires a subscription for full access, but what is generally available should be a good starting point. Browse only-no search available.

Browse journals with long runs at Collins Library, too. Search the catalog for a title of your choice, or start with one of these possibilities:

Nature 1912-present in print; 1869-1984 in microform. A great place to browse for instrumentation advertising.
Life Available from 1936-1972 in print at Collins in the Print Journals room on the lower level; images from Life magazine are available via the LIFE Photo Archive hosted by Google.
Time 1923-present available in print and microform at Collins; advertising aimed at the general public.

Note: If you're looking at historical magazines online, be sure to check whether full pages are scanned and whether ad material is included. You'll have a better chance of finding ads when pages are images or PDFs.