General Education

Scholarly Secondary Sources 

Scholarly secondary sources in the discipline of History:

• offer detailed scholarly analysis of primary sources and discussion of historical events/issues
• are removed in time from the historical events they discuss
• are normally written by professional historians
• are the result of original research by historians
• include clear evidence of that research (e.g., through ample references)

Types of scholary secondary sources

• Scholarly monographs: Book length scholarly works that discuss a single topic in depth, present the original research of the author, and are written by a single author (or occasionally co-authors). Monographs are great for offering both breadth and depth on a particular topic. 
   
• Edited collections: Book length scholarly works that are organized by an editor(s), where each chapter is an essay written by a different person presenting their own research, and where the chapters offer different perspectives on a common academic theme. 
   
• Scholarly journal articles: A shorter scholarly work (~10-30 pages) published in a single issue of a scholarly journal (note that journals are published on an on-going basis, often with multiple issues each year). Journal articles tend to focus on a very narrow aspect of a larger topic.

Slideshow: Evaluating sources for relevance and scholariness

Reading Secondary Sources Effectively and Efficiently in History

Academic books and articles can be challenging to read. Reading sections of the article in the following order - rather than from start to finish - can make it easier to understand and digest the content of the article or book.

1. First, read the abstract if one is provided - it will summarize the goals and main arguments
2. Then read the introduction/introductory paragraphs - it will introduce the topic and main objectives/arguments of the article/chapter in more detail
3. Next read the conclusion - it will review and summarize the article/chapter's major conclusions
4. Go back and start from the beginning, read more carefully (mostly) from start to finish. It is okay if you skim some sections, but you will need to read a lot of the article to understand.
5. Pay special attention to sections that mention historiography or a literature review, Look carefully for mention of scholars and scholarship on the subject. By doing this, you will learn what existing scholarly literature and arguments the author is building on and responding to in their own analysis.
6. Study footnotes and bibliographies, look for primary sources - primary sources are the evidence the author used in their analysis. You can recognize them by their publication dates, which should be from the time period you are studying. Navigate to where they are discussed in the article and read about them in context.

Example article: Who built the empire’s garden? Tea capitalism in Assam and the making of the tea community

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.  

Historical Abstracts: An important resource for history research. 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: A very large database with excellent History and Humanities content (thought not exclusive to these areas). Try the filters on the left side to limit by academic subject discipline. NOTE: also includes primary source content, so be sure to evaluate sources for secondary vs. primary nature.

You can find tertiary (also known as background or reference) sources:

• On the Background Sources tab of this guide. Recommended collections for this course include:
  • Oxford Reference Online
  • CredoReference
  • World History in Context (also includes primary and secondary sources)
• By searching in LibrarySearch and filtering by Resource Type: Reference Entries

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

Good search:
Tea India colonialism 
Poor search:
role of colonialism in South Asian tea industry 

Finding too much?

• Add an additional search term that narrows your topic  tea india colonialism labour
• Put “quotation marks around important phrases" to search for exact phrases, e.g., "South Asia"

Finding too little?

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

For better searching, think of multiple ways to describe your topic and switch terms occasionally e.g. World War I vs. First World War; Middle Ages vs Medieval 

To find tertiary / background sources 

• Use very simple searches, usually just one or two words works best. e.g. opium colonial
• Pay close attention to the larger work (e.g., the encyclopedia) the source is found in, to make sure what you have found is relevant, e.g., an  entry in an encyclodia of American history will be more relevant than one on the history of another country.

Why use Library Search Tools in academic research?

Library tools like LibrarySearch and journal article databases are different from Google and Gen AI tools in a lot of important and helpful ways. Library search tools:

• Contain and specialize in published academic content
• Search and provide access to content that has been selected for its credibility, academic value and relevance 
• Search content that is verifiable and citeable
• Do not "hallucinate" or fabricate content or claim
• Provide access to the complete and full-text of books, articles etc. at no additional cost to you
• Acknowledge intellectual property and the importance of ethical information use and access