Summary
"Personal narrative" is a literary form that describes a first-person account of a certain time and place in history. These resources convey the past experiences of individuals and communities, and are particularly useful in the study of populations historically misrepresented or absent from traditional recordkeeping. But identifying and accessing such texts can be difficult. This new research guide published by the Milstein Division of U.S. History, Local History, and Genealogy, aims to ease researchers into the accurate and productive navigation of NYPL collections, and provides examples, recommendations, and strategies for obtaining a comprehensive sense of the extensive range of first person historical accounts available at NYPL.
Personal Narratives
