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

August 7, 2008 9:01 AM

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.
posted by cog_nate (9 comments total)

There is some subscriber-only content on the site, but the majority of it is freely available.
posted by cog_nate at 9:01 AM on August 7, 2008

Great find. Thanks.
posted by Lutoslawski at 9:46 AM on August 7, 2008

What a great resource for my English classes. Thanks!
posted by themadjuggler at 10:05 AM on August 7, 2008

My searches kept bringing me to password walls. Is there a way to search only free content, or at least sort results?
posted by LarryC at 10:50 AM on August 7, 2008

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.)
posted by languagehat at 11:25 AM on August 7, 2008

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.
posted by zepheria at 12:06 PM on August 7, 2008 [1 favorite]

This is a wonderful find. Thanks.
posted by notashroom at 12:59 PM on August 7, 2008

A great thread -- thanx for posting!
posted by dancestoblue at 4:59 PM on August 7, 2008

Thanks, Zepharia.
posted by LarryC at 4:21 PM on August 8, 2008