Comments on: In the First Person -- an index to letters, diaries, oral histories and personal narratives

In the First Person -- an index to letters, diaries, oral histories and personal narratives

cog_nate — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 09:01:54 -0800

In the First Person "is a free, high quality, professionally published, in-depth index of close to 4,000 collections of personal narratives in English from around the world. It lets you keyword search more than 700,000 pages of full-text by more than 18,000 individuals from all walks of life. It also contains pointers to some 4,300 audio and video files and 30,000 bibliographic records." (Description from website.) You can also browse by repository, collection, subject and several other ways.

By: cog_nate

cog_nate — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 09:01:59 -0800

There is some subscriber-only content on the site, but the majority of it is freely available.

By: Lutoslawski

Lutoslawski — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 09:46:21 -0800

Great find. Thanks.

By: themadjuggler

themadjuggler — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 10:05:08 -0800

What a great resource for my English classes. Thanks!

By: LarryC

LarryC — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 10:50:01 -0800

My searches kept bringing me to password walls. Is there a way to search only free content, or at least sort results?

By: languagehat

languagehat — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 11:25:13 -0800

Wow, that's great. Too bad so much of it is restricted-access, but there's a lot of good stuff there. I just read an account by the CIA guy who recruited Oleg Penkovsky. (Incidentally, if you're trying the geographical index and can't find Russia under Europe, that's because they have it under Asia for some reason.)

By: zepheria

zepheria — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 12:06:07 -0800

To search only free content, go to the advanced search screen and select FREE ONLY next to Exclude For Fee Products: This recent AskMe thread has more good leads.

By: notashroom

notashroom — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 12:59:52 -0800

This is a wonderful find. Thanks.

By: dancestoblue

dancestoblue — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 16:59:36 -0800

A great thread -- thanx for posting!

By: LarryC

LarryC — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 16:21:56 -0800

Thanks, Zepharia.