Tips For Searching the Online Catalog
Try searching the person you are interested in as an AUTHOR in the online catalog.
Try adding diary or letter or correspondence to a keyword search about the person you are interested in.
Another Helpful Guide
Finding Letters/Papers/Diaries
In the days before text messaging, cell phones, and e-mail- people wrote letters, diaries, and kept paper records of their activities. Many of these resources are available and provide valuable (primary source) descriptions of the life and actions of some key players in American history. Here are just a sampling of some available in the Alkek Library
The Little War of Private Post by Call Number: Alkek General, Floor 5 E717.1 .P6 -OR EBOOKISBN: 0803287577Charles Johnson Post (1873-1956) received not one but two handmade red flannel bellybands for protection against tropical fevers when he enlisted as a private in 1898 with the 71st New York Infantry. He was paid a monthly wage of $13.00, with an additional $1.30 combat pay per month. Setting off for what he later termed "the little wars that are the mere trivia of history," he came back to write "a mild chronicle of many little men who were painting on a big canvas, and of their little epic routines of life, with a common death at their elbow. It is only the little, but keen, tribulations that made the epic routine of an old-fashioned war."
