I am an undergrad student researching on the bubonic plague in San Francisco from 1901-1906. I am not a history major and the only person I know from that department is my research mentor. She and I have used all of the resources my university has to offer and I could only find newspaper articles from there. I need more documents, ideally government documents or medical documents. It would be very helpful to find notes/reports from the doctor who discovered that the plague had reached San Francisco or diaries from people living during the plague. I don’t know who I should contact to find anything like this. Should I try to find some historians who have specialised in this, contact the local government, libraries or universities and which ones?
Hi! I’m a history major undergrad and these are some common and reliable sources: library of Congress, local government websites, a census perhaps? Also, depending on your university, try to look for databases that contain primary sources specifically. My university database has a New York Times archive that has just about every archived article that exists from that source. I would try googling “san Francisco bubonic plague articles” as newspapers during that time can also be a primary source. Photographs and maps can also serve as a primary source. I would also suggest calling the county clerk for San Francisco and seeing if they have any archives about the bubonic plague, such as death records. You can also try going into San Francisco State University’s website and see if you can gain access to their databases. If you are apart of the CSU system, you may be able to access documents. If all else fails, contact your professor and let him know you are having a hard time with your research. Please let me know if any of this was confusing! I just want you to succeed :)
If you can find a book or articles about the bubonic plague then look at their bibliographies. You'll be able to see what primary sources are available and where they can be found. Unless you're located in or near San Francisco then you might have trouble actually accessing the documents, but you'll still be able to use the primary source quotations from the books you've found.
I would first try some broad databases, and then look for more specific ones, e.g. ones local to california, san francisco, and medical history. For broad databases, I've listed what I think are the best and largest ones at https://www.faganfinder.com/. For San Francisco, the website for the local library probably has some good links. For medical history, some quick googling shows some potential places to look: https://www.google.com/search?q=medical+history+database+OR+archive