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History 3357 American Consumer Culture

Recognizing Scholarly Sources in History

History is a topic with broad interest that extends beyond history scholars. For this reason, you must pay particular attention to the quality and audience of the sources you will use in your research. Look for substantial sources that clearly display indicators of scholarliness:

  • Authority: Written by a history scholar with an advanced academic credential, published by a reputable academic organization.
  • Audience: Aimed at an academic audience.
  • Process: The source should be based on substantial original historical research (look for footnotes and bibliography), and be peer-reviewed.
  • Purpose: Scholarly sources are intended to build knowledge and add to scholarly discourse on a topic, not to entertain readers or sell something.

Examples: Scholarly Sources

Examples: Non--scholarly sources:

  • Book review - note the book price, a clue that this is a review.
  • Magazine article - note the short length, lack of footnotes/references, and that the author has no academic credential.
  • Website - note the absence of footnotes and that no individual author is listed.

Finding Sources

Find Secondary Sources in MRU LibrarySearch 

Try improving your searches by:

  • using the sidebar filter options to filter results to only relevant subjects, or to preferred resource type, e.g., books, articles, reference entries
  • using the lock icon to lock in selected search filters
  • using the drop down options OR advanced search screen to search for important terms in the subject or title fields
  • refining results to only peer-reviewed sources - this searches only within scholarly journals and EXCLUDES books
  • signing in for enhanced results, to save "pinned" favourites lists and search queries
  • look carefully at the subjects listed for each item; these tags can lead you to other items with the same tag

Did you know: You can also filter specific items OUT of your results using the EXCLUDE option on each filter 

 

Find Secondary Sources in Subject Specific Database: 

Still looking for information or overwhelmed by LibrarySearch results? Use one of history-specific journal article databases on the ARTICLES tab of this guide.  

America History and Life: An important resource for U.S. and Canadian history research. Use the drop down menus to search in article abstracts. Try the advanced search function, which allows you to search for articles discussing specific historical time periods, or use the side filters to narrow results by date, subject or type of publication.

Jstor: Though not specific to History, this is a large journal database that has excellent history journal content. Use the filters on the side to limit to the discipline of History.

When searching, use keywords that represent only the important aspects of your topic, and avoid sentence fragments

Good search:
World War I AND Canada AND suffrage
Poor search:
influence of World War I on women's suffrage movement in Canada

Finding too much?

  • Add an additional search term that narrows your topic
  • Put “quotation marks around important phrases" to search for exact phrases, e.g., "world war II"

Finding too little?

  • Remove a search term 
  • Put * after the root of a word to look for multiple endings, e.g., environ*
  • Use OR between similar terms/ideas to search for EITHER word e.g., (conscription OR military draft) 

Have a search term with alternate spellings (e.g. British/American/Canadian spellngs)? 

  • Some search tools allow you to use a question mark to represent a letter that may or may not exist in a word
    e.g. labo?r will find both labour and labor

For better searching, think of multiple ways to describe your topic and switch terms occasionally e.g. World War II vs. Second World War

 

Citation Chaining

A highly relevant secondary source - once you finally find it - can lead you to other potentially relevant sources via its footnotes and bibliography

1) Carefully examine footnotes/endnotes and bibliographies of helpful sources to identify potentially relevant sources. Be careful to distinguish primary from secondary sources as you do this; you can usually tell by the publication date of the source. 

2) For relevant items you find in the footnotes/bibliography, check for their titles in LibrarySearch to see if MRU owns or has to them.

3) If MRU doesn't own the item, you can place an interlibrary loan request and we will find a copy for you

 

The red arrows in LibrarySearch can lead you to additional relevant sources - either cited IN the source at hand, or CITING that source.


HANDS ON ACTIVITY:

1) In LibrarySearch, do a search related to your own topic.

2) Look for some results with citation trails and follow the trails for potentially relevant sources. Pin titles you'd want to follow up on.

3) Choose one book or journal article from your results and make note of its title. You will come back to it shortly. 

Google Scholar

  • Google Scholar searches websites it has identified as offering scholarly content (publisher websites, academic repositories etc.)
  • Helpful for discovering journal articles, particularly on more obscure topics.
  • Adjust the "library links" settings in Google Scholar to link you to Mount Royal University Library. This links you to full-text via MRU Library where available. Note that Google Scholar generally won't link to the full text of a book, though occasionally it will link to a excerpt or preview of a book.
  • Pay close attention to Google Scholar's "Cited By" references, which lead to a list of sources that have cited a particular source and can be helpful in leading to additional, relevant sources on a topic.

     google scholar cited by
 
Hands on activity

1. Go to Google Scholar and look for the title you made note of in LibrarySearch.

2.  Follow the cited by link - how many sources have cited your book or article since it was published?

3. Can you access the full-text for any of the "cited by" results? If not, how might you get access to them? 

MRU Interlibrary loan

  • If you citations or other metnions of books and articles not owned by MRU, you can request them via this free MRU service.
  • Journal articles and book chapters generally arrive within 48 hours.
  • Books are sent via surface mail and take longer so plan ahead.

Primary Sources for Consumer History

Primary Source Research Advice: tips for how to find primary sources at MRU and beyond

Women's Magazine Archive: Full backfiles of leading women’s interest consumer magazines such as Good Housekeeping, Ladies' Home Journal, Women's Day, Cosmopolitan, Seventeen, Essence, and Flare. Coverage ranges from the late-19th century through to 2005.

Emergence of Advertising in America - Duke University collection of advertisements, 1850-1920.

Smithsonian: Warshaw Collection of Business American a 1724-1977  - Largest advertising ephemera collection in the USA.

Ad*Access - US and Canadian advertisements covering beauty and hygiene, radio, television, transportation and World War II propaganda, 1911-1955.

Consumer Advertising During the Great Depression: A Resource Guide - Covers many different aspects of advertising during this period, including grocery advertising and gender in advertising, 

MRU Library Primary Sources for US History - try the historical newspaper and periodicals section, the Library of Congress and National Archives links.

 

Journals Related to Consumer Culture

Searching within a directly relevant journal can be a very effective way of finding sources. Try your topic in the following journals (look for "Search inside" box)

Finding Books on the Shelf

Call number: The address for a physical library item, so you can find it on the shelf. In MRU's LibrarySearch, it is displayed below the title of the book. You can follow the locate icon for a map to the book on its shelf.

Librarian

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Alice Swabey
she/her
Contact:
Drop-in help Mondays 12-2 at the Library Service Desk. Appointments available via Google Meet or in-person. Email help is also available.
Email: aswabey@mtroyal.ca

Chicago Style Citation

- MRU Guide to Chicago Style Referencing  - sections B, G, D, and H offer primary source examples

- Chicago style - slide presentation

- How to cite an advertisement in CMOS: advice from Western University Library. Look advice for Selected Citation Example.