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.

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.

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
• 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.