Your goal is to explain the significance of your source within an Atlantic context.  Even though it will be necessary for you to think about your source beyond local or national histories, many relevant sources for your work will be organized in a way that highlights individual nations, geographies, and topics. 

As such, you can use the way that modern editors have collected sources and libraries have organized sources to your advantage if you understand a few strategies for searching the library catalog. 

Search in Books + Media using keywords that describe your topic, combined with keywords that tend to signify published primary source format. Format words to try:

EXAMPLE:

Books + Media keyword search: "Ireland" "history" "sources" gives us...

Not everything in the catalog that could potentially be a primary source is categorized as such.  There are many items that weren't published as "primary sources" but become primary sources over time. One way of finding these works is to do a keyword or subject search for relevant subject and then order your results by year.

Word of caution:  This strategy will not account for reprintings and additional publications.  An item may have originally been published in 1540, but republished in 1960.  The date likely to be in the cataloging record, and therefore the date that appears when you sort these records, will be 1960.

This Catalyst search...

• Subject: Pirates  
• Material type: Books
• Sort: Date-oldest

Will bring up this result...

You may be interested in looking at the writings of a particular person important for your topic.  If you think they may have published works, search for their name as an author to see what books we have written by them.

EXAMPLE: AUTHOR = De Las Casas give us...

Below are some edited collections your classmates and I have found in our collections.  Remember that these may now be on closed reserve, so check Catalyst to find out where they are in the library.