Primary sources are materials directly related to a topic by time or participation. These materials include letters, speeches, diaries, newspaper articles from the time, oral history interviews, documents, photographs, artifacts, cookbooks or anything else that provides firsthand accounts about a person or event.
This local guide provides assistance in pursuing research using primary sources, especially those we have available here in several formats: paper, republication, microfilm, and electronic. The database below helps identifies primary source repositories around the world
ArchiveGrid serves as a single point of entry that provides online access to descriptions of archival collections held by thousands of libraries, museums, historical societies, and archives worldwide.
Digitized books on cooking, gastronomy, food production, etc.
The Cookbook and Home Economics Collection includes books from the Young Research Library Department of Special Collections at UCLA, The Bancroft Library at The University of California, Berkeley, and the Prelinger Library.
Feeding America: The Historic American Cookbook Project This link opens in a new windowhttps://d.lib.msu.edu/fa
The Indian Community Cookbook Project : "A space that aims to feature underrepresented Recipes, Recipe Books of all kinds and formats (digital, printed, handwritten, oral, audio, visual) from communities located across India and Food Memories, a series of interviews on how community food traditions & memories are retained in the modern-day context."
Feast Afrique is a resource on the West African culinary heritage, curated by Ozoz Sokoh, author of The Kitchen Butterfly blog, and dedicated to exploring sociopolitical, economic, and culinary pathways and practices related to the production and consumption of food, particularly the legacy of West African culinary excellence from the 15th century through the Transatlantic slave trade, its contribution to the Industrial Revolution, and global development. The site includes links to digitized books, data visualizations, videos of talks and events, essays, recipes, and a “Reading Challenge” feature on West African & Diasporic culinary history, literature, language and other aspects of food.
Food Timeline provides a wealth of historic information, primary documents, and original research on the history of food including recipes.