How does everyone get hold of primary sources?

Morwen Edhelwen said:

So am trying to work on an alternate history thing but have no idea how to get hold of primary sources for it.(It involves the United Fruit Company's contracting Jamaican and other West Indian workers to its plantations in Honduras) How has everyone here got hold of primary sources for "straight" historical fiction? (Probably a stupid question)

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For me, it's pretty straight forward as a lot of Roman primary sources [albeit translated] are pretty easily accessible. Is there a university you could contact that holds archives?

I also benefit from being close to the archaeology, living not too far from Hadrian's Wall, the Antonine Wall, Trimontium and three Universities which have Roman collections in their museums.

I couldn't find much on ancient Armenia, so I contacted a retired Oxford professor who used to work in Armenian Studies. He was extremely helpful in explaining some of the history himself, and providing me with a reading list.

You might see if there is a university somewhere that has a program for Central American studies, or Honduras in particular.

Museum Curators and librarians are also very knowledgeable, and often quite willing to help you find the information you need.

Newspaper and magazine/journal archives can still be helpful if you have some dates to check against.

Since you're so far away from what you're writing about, I think your best bet might be to search on Google for the largest university in the Honduras and the name of the department head, possibly history, possibly in the business school - and then send him or her a letter or e-mail, in Spanish, asking for help. If you don't get anywhere that way, I'd do the same type of search for a major US university that has a Central American studies department and try them. It may take you a while to make much progress. Puma

I read my secondary sources carefully and check their footnotes and bibliography.

If you are looking for something outside the usual holdings of your public library, go to to a university library. Even if you aren't enrolled there, you may be able to get access through visiting scholar or cooperative lending programs. Even if you can't borrow, they will usually let any visitor in to just read.

For scholarly journals, find out what ones are in the holdings. Then find out what ones are available in online databases. Access to those may be restricted by password, so see what your library has a license for.

Depending on what you are looking for, the items may be held in an archive. Archives don't allow borrowing and may restrict copying, but they can be real gold mines of primary source info as well as holding rare books.

Ask your librarian about interlibrary loan. Even if your library doesn't have what you want, they may be able to borrow it from another library. University libraries specialize in this, though public libraries do a good trade there too.

Puma makes an excellent point about finding out who specializes in your subject area. Find out who has the best Latin American studies program in Australia (you're in OZ, right?)

But, here's my caveat on research. It's lots of fun and educational, but don't discount the power of a decent secondary source and a standard ration of imagination.

No question is silly, Morwen, but this answer might be.

Like you, I live in a country that people move to when they emigrate. Have you looked for a local social club where Jamaicans or Hondurians (sp?) gather? Sometimes, stories are handed down to each generation and it's fascinating listening to the older folks talk. You might have to sort out truth from fiction or myth, but it might give you a feeling for what went on.

I hope this helps a bit.

I don't have an answer but can relate to your problem. I always wanted to write nonfiction but in a literary way. My mother left a keepsake box full of my parents' love letters from their transatlantic courtship and life on an aboriginal reserve in the 1920's. I turned this into a research project. It involved WWI so I went to the war museums here in Ottawa and also the libraries to check out battles, fatalities, ship names, events, etc. They mentioned certain public figures, such as Charles Lindbergh, and I researched him. Cross-referencing of dates of public happenings helped make my parents' story significant. There were facts about all the new inventions of cable, telephone, airplane, etc. to check out on the Internet.
I think what I'm saying is that you have a story people will love to read once you have a personal account to hang the general facts around. I couldn't have invented characters on my own. I looked up books by other authors from the same period, dictionaries of the Cree language. The family memoir, which I also wrote starting from the journals, etc. of both parents, ended up with a bibliography at the back. Have you got a Chapters store where they let you browse in books (eg. encyclopedias) while you drink your Starbucks coffee, or is that an Ottawa thing?

Even a university not in the country you are studying can and should have access to sources that are relevant. Maybe not the original copies (which few people can get access to in many cases anyway even if you work at the place where they are held) but certainly copies or transcripts of them.

Some museums now have online resources for studying their primary sources through high res scans and photographs. Art galleries, for example, sometimes have high res scans of works of art available for art students to examine (so they can see the detail of the brush work, for example, without needing to actually go to the gallery). It may be worth checking to see if such things are available in your study area.

Have you checked pdr's spectacular sticky thread in this subforum? If what's there is not exactly what you want, the thread may give you some more ideas on where to look.

Aside from major libraries in the USA, I had the good fortune to have a genealogist in the Netherlands research my MC in the Bibiliotheca Rosenthal and old publications. What she found allowed me to change my novel Rocamora for the better. A professor in Madrid researched my MC for me in the archives of the Inquisition and confirmed what I had hoped.

I've always found scholars at universities wherever (UK, Australia, US) to be extremely helpful if I contact them for advice. I write 19th century fiction set in England, which is a bit easier, but the scholarly community is very generous. I'd email someone at your nearest university in a department that seems at all fitting, and he or she, if not the right contact, will probably tell you who you should contact for this information.

Good luck! Primary source research is thrilling. I'm fortunate to be friends with a C18th/C19th scholar who works at a college very close to my home, and she's working on a research project right now that will be very helpful for a detail in my current novel. One of the reasons that we've become friends is her interest in my writing a novel that's relevant to her field. May you develop a similar friendship!

Most corporations have archives of material, and they LOOOOOVE when scholars (or creative writers) are interested in using it. In this case, my brief troll through the Wikipedia entry on United Fruit Company indicates that United Fruit morphed into what is now Chiquita Bananas in the first half of the 20th century.

Looking at the Chiquita website and some of the sources for the Wikipedia article, it looks like the National Security Archive at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. holds The Chiquita Papers, which might or might not have what you're looking for. I'd phone or e-mail the contact there to ask 1) if they have United Fruit papers too, and 2) if it's possible to get anything scanned or photocopied and mailed to you, or if you have to take a trip there to use the archive. Also, there's a United Fruit Historical Society with a pretty extensive bibliography of secondary sources. The website provides contact information for the two scholars in charge. A final excellent option is to contact the Chiquita corporation directly to ask where they keep their historical records and if it's possible to access any of them from abroad. I'd be willing to be that a corporation's archivists will be a little more friendly than archivists in general, since corporations are interested in people who are working on their histories and essentially giving them free advertising.