Slavery and Emancipation in the Atlantic World

This guide will help you find resources relevant to this course.

Secondary Sources

There will be times during this project when you will need to use secondary sources to round out your understanding of the time period, the location, and the people you are discussing in your blog. That's when you will want to use secondary sources to fill in those gaps. Below are some ways of finding secondary sources.

Remember:

A secondary source is a book or article written about an event or topic, based on primary sources.

Secondary sources interpret original documents and give you background information about the topic you want to research.

Examples of secondary sources are: articles, dictionaries, encyclopedias, textbooks and books that interpret or review research works.

Find Articles

The library has a few different ways to find research articles. Below are your options with a brief description. Word choice when searching for articles is important. Here are some search terms you might try.

  • Slave insurrections
  • Slave Trade
  • Slave revolts
  • Trans-Atlantic slave trade
  • European colonies AND slaves
  • French OR Spanish OR English AND colonies

Boston Public Library eResources

eResources available through the Boston Public Library

BPL eCards are virtual library cards that allow users immediate entry to all of Boston Public Library's remotely-accessible electronic resources, including magazine databases, downloadable audio, video, eBooks, and music.

Students living in Massachusetts while attending school are eligible for a card. Click here to sign up for one.

Save your ecard number and PIN on your computer for quick access.

Recommended Resource Pages at BPL

Recommended Databases at BPL

  • Slavery & Antislavery
  • Sabin Americana
  • 17th and 18th Century US Newspapers
  • 19th Century US Newspapers