The Library Catalog contains hundreds of books and documents published in the World War I period. Choose a KEYWORD search and limit the range of publication dates to focus on primary materials. For example:
KW: women AND KW: labor with Date Range: 1915 - 1920. REMEMBER to specify the time period of the war: otherwise your results will NOT be primary sources!
Many of the records retrieved with a keyword strategy contain useful SUBJECT Headings (use the DESCRIPTION dropdown on any record to find and launch them in a new search), such as:
| World War, 1914-1918 -- Women -- United States [ su:World War, 1914-1918 AND su: women AND su:United States] | |
| World War, 1914-1918 -- War work -- United States | |
| World War, 1914-1918 -- Participation, Female | |
| World War, 1914-1918 -- Food supply -- United States | |
|
World War, 1914-1918 -- Economic aspects -- United States Women's Land Army of America --------*-----------*-----------*---------- Using these headings will yield both primary and secondary sources. REMEMBER: well documented secondary sources are frequently gateways to primary material. AND.....don't forget to examine the Subject Headings on the book and document records in your results! |
In addition to books published before 1920 in HELIN and the other library catalogs linked to the Adams Library homepage (Brown, Bryant, URI, Ocean State Libraries system, etc.), book digitization projects have proliferated over the last decade bringing increasing numbers of books onto the web.
The HATHI Trust fulltext archive represents a particularly authoritative and well-documented effort. 
HathiTrust is a partnership of major research institutions and libraries working to ensure that the cultural record is preserved and accessible long into the future. There are more than 100 partners in HathiTrust, and membership is open to institutions worldwide. Although volumes under copyright are included in HATHI Trust, books, reports, and other text documents published before 1924 in the United States are in the public domain, free of copyright restrictions, and are fully readable and searchable in HATHI.
Since the HATHI Catalog is created by library partner institutions, consider using our standard SUBJECT search "World War, 1914-1918" and a LIMIT of Year of Publication BETWEEN 1914 - 1919 coupled with keywords in your research area or the names of individuals, organizations, government agencies, events, etc.