History

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 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

Find Secondary Sources in Subject Specific Database: America History and Life

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 American 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.

Find Secondary Sources in a Subject Specific Journal

Try searching within a relevant journal for article on your topic:

• Journal of Cold War Studies
• Cold War History
• American Historical Review

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:
"nuclear anxiety" "cold war" America
Poor search:
the effects of nuclear anxiety on Cold War America

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., "cold war"

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., (nuclear OR atomic) 

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

To find tertiary / background sources 

• Use very simple searches, usually just one or two words works best. e.g. Cold War, nuclear testing
• 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.

Where to Find Primary Sources

Visit a primary source collection relevant to this course:

• Atomic Heritage Foundation: Includes a document collection related to the Cold War, nuclear testing, the Manhattan Project and more. 
• Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Reading Room: A library of declassified U.S. intelligence documents.
• Harry S. Truman Library Online Collections: Includes documents relating to World War II, the atomic bomb and Cold War.
• National Security Archive: Includes the document collection The Atomic Bomb and the End of World War II (see table of contents on the left), and a larger document collection (search via the documents tab)
• Voices of the Manhattan Project: Oral histories from Manhattan Project veterans and their families. Hosted by the National Museum of Nuclear Energy and History.
• Internet Archive: Not specific to the Atomic Age, but an excellent place to look for primary documents on many topics. Best for finding specific known documents, but relevant keyword searches often also yield decent results. 
• New York Times Historical Archive: Historical newspapers are an accessible primary source type that will relate to many topics in this course. Be sure to limit search results by relevant dates.
• Women's Magazine Archive: Includes women's magazines from the World War II and Cold War eras. Includes American and Canadian content. Be sure to limit search results by relevant dates.
• US Congressional Record: The official record of the proceedings and debates of the United States Congress. Published daily when Congress is in session, the Congressional Record began publication in 1873. To search with a date range, or by keyword, choose MORE OPTIONS, limit to CONGRESSIONAL RECORD BOUND and select relevant Congress years.

Other ways to find primary sources

•  On the Primary Sources tab of this guide, browse for relevant primary source collections. Look for the Primary Sources by Geographical Area of Study heading.
• On Google - add the terms primary sources or primary documents to your search query e.g., Truman atomic bomb primary documents
• In LibrarySearch :
  • Add the word sources to your search query, or search for a specific source type e.g., speeches, correspondence, diaries, royal commission. E.g., Cold War sources, or Pearl Harbor speeches
  • Try using the drop down menu to search for your terms only in the subject of the results.
  • Use the creation date filter and specify dates or years relevant to your topic
  • Use the resource type filter and do a newspaper search

Primary Source Search Tips

• Dates: If the search tool offers the option to limit by date, use it. Be very specific to the time period you are studying, especially with newspapers

• Search terms: Use terminology from the time period and perspective you are studying - e.g., Great War vs. World War; Cuba Crisis vs. October Crisis; experiment with different terms, e.g. nuclear vs. atomic

• Advanced search tools: Try going to the advanced search and searching for your terms in the title of the articles, or look for the option to search in only specific types of documents (e.g., only front page news articles)

• Newspapers are one of the easiest types of primary source to find, and are a good starting point depending on the recency of your topic
   
• Be methodical - identity relevant document collections, and review them systematically to find the best/most relevant - not the first - documents, e.g., look at each issue of a newspaper from the time your event was happening
   
• More tips for finding primary sources