Course Guide: HIS 291
Find Secondary History Sources
What is a secondary source? In history, researchers refer to secondary sources as those created by anyone who did not experience the event. Rather, the creators are interpreting and analyzing what has already happened. Most often, secondary sources are presented as books and articles from scholarly journals. Scholarly journals are publications focused on specific academic topics, such as the Journal of American History or The Journal of Modern History. One of the important distinctions between scholarly journals and popular publications, such as magazines or newspapers, is that in order to be published in a scholarly journal, articles go through an academic publishing process called peer review.
The following resources are among those recommended for finding secondary, history sources.
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America: History and Life with Full Text This link opens in a new window America: History & Life is an index of literature covering the history and culture of the United States and Canada, from prehistory to the present. The database indexes journals from 1964 to the present and also includes citations and links to book and media reviews. Strong English-language journal coverage but also included are abstracts in English of articles published in more than 40 languages.
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Historical Abstracts with Full Text This link opens in a new window Historical Abstracts covers the history of the world (excluding the United States and Canada) from 1450 to the present. The database indexes academic historical journals in over 40 languages back to 1955.
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American History in Video This link opens in a new window Contains award-winning documentaries, featuring dramatic reenactments and engaging analysis from prominent scholars and experts that bring history alive for students and give library patrons hundreds of educational video titles they can view at home or in the classroom.
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NKU's Books & MediaSearch the library for print and electronic books. Provides call number locations for items housed in the stacks and links to items available electronically
Find Primary Sources
Primary sources are those created during a time period or event that you are studying. Examples include news articles from a time period, diaries from those who experienced a historical event, letters written during the time, and pictures. The library provides access to databases that contain primary sources. In addition, a number of museums, universities, historical societies, and libraries provide electronic access to primary source material. Connect to the recommended resources below and view the video for an overview of finding primary sources online and through Steely Library's Special Collections and Archives department.
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Historical Newspapers: The New York Times This link opens in a new window This historical newspaper provides genealogists, researchers and scholars with online, easily-searchable first-hand accounts and unparalleled coverage of the politics, society and events of the time.
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Accessible Archives This link opens in a new window Full text historical collections including period newspapers and magazines from the 18th century to the early 20th century in the United States. Collections include African American Newspapers, Colonial Newspapers, Kentucky County Histories, Ohio County Histories, Civil War Collection, Godey’s Lady’s Book, Anatomy of Protest in America, Invention and Technology in America, National Anti-Slavery Standard, Native Americans in History, Quarantine & Disease Control in America, and Women’s Suffrage Collection. **Migration Note: On August 30, 2024, the legacy Accessible Archives platform will be retired and all Accessible Archives content will be redirected to History Commons. Existing Accessible Archives links will redirect to History Commons indefinitely.
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Chronicling AmericaA searchable full-text collection of pages from thousands of digitized newspapers from across the United States, including Puerto Rico.
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Kentucky Digital LibraryShared archival collections from Kentucky libraries. Materials found here include maps, images, newspapers, books, journals, oral histories, architectural drawings, minutes. Coverage: Kentucky history from the 1600’s - present; Items published from 1887 - present.
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Steely Library Special Collections & Archive The Eva G. Farris Special Collections and Schlachter University Archives acquires, describes, preserves and provides access to unique materials documenting the rich history of NKU and the Northern Kentucky-Greater Cincinnati region for the benefit of the university and the community.
Searching Tips
KEYWORDS AND MORE
- Break down your research question
- Pick out the core concepts
- You want between 2-4 keywords. Avoid fluff words like impact and effect.
- Why? Words such as impact are used all the time so you are more likely to get results that aren't relevant to your topic.
- Example: Berlin Wall AND Reunification AND Economy
- NOT: Berlin Wall AND Impact
- Identify 1 or 2 synonyms or related ideas for each core concept
- Why? Computers aren't that smart. They won't do any interpretations for you, which means they will spit out only what you put in
- Example: Economy = financial, wealth, socioeconomic
- Why? Computers aren't that smart. They won't do any interpretations for you, which means they will spit out only what you put in
- When available, use the Advanced Search option in a database so that you can apply multiple keywords
- Consider placing quotation marks around key phrases to ensure the database retrieves that exact phrase. For example, searching "Great War" will retrieve sources where the words Great and War are always next to each other, in that order.
- In many databases, you will have many filters available to narrow and focus your results. Look for these options on your results screen, and will contain options like narrowing by date, publication type, subject, etc.
- Last Updated: Jun 5, 2025 11:14 AM
- URL: https://nku.libguides.com/HIS291
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