Welcome to the course guide for HIST 408J: Global Water in the Modern Era: Capitalism, State Power, and Environmental Crises. This guide provides links to recommended resources available through the Yale University Library and the World Wide Web.
To complete your writing assignments for this course, you will need to find and utilize primary sources. Primary sources are invaluable to researchers, as they provide first-hand accounts of historic and modern events. Primary sources include (but are not limited to) personal correspondences, journal entries, interviews, transcripts from government hearings, and raw data. This page provides an overview of some of the primary sources available at Yale University: Primary Sources at Yale
If you have questions at any stage of your research, please feel free to reach out to library and archives staff:
Joshua Cochran, Archivist for American Diplomacy, Manuscripts and Archives, Sterling Memorial Library - joshua.cochran@yale.edu
Bill Landis, Associate Director for Public Services, Manuscripts and Archives, Sterling Memorial Library - bill.landis@yale.edu
James Kessenides, Kaplanoff Librarian for American History - james.kessenides@yale.edu
Rachel Sperling, Librarian for Environmental Studies - rachel.sperling@yale.edu
The main search tools for finding books, articles, databases, archival collections, and more at Yale (and beyond) can all be found on the "Find, Request, and Use" page of the library's website. Here are a few quick refreshers, but be sure to visit the page for a full overview:
The Yale Library has seven different special collections units, all of which hold archival collections in addition to rare and unique books and other published materials. Materials used in today's class session are from Manuscripts and Archives in Sterling Memorial Library. Feel free to contact Josh Cochran, if you have questions about finding and using materials in Manuscripts and Archives or other Yale Library special collections.