Books are often the best starting point for studying a historical topic that is new to you.
LibrarySearch is the best way to find print and electronic books.
LibrarySearch isn't searching within the books themselves, so you may find additional sources by searching more broadly for the issue or time period into which your topic might fall (e.g., searching for racism Canada history if a search for anti-asian racism canada was unsuccessful). Within those books, look at the chapter headings or check the index to see if your narrower topic of anti-asiam racism is discussed.
Additional Tips
Pro Tip
For some topics, it can be difficult to find books about the Canadian historical context. Canadian history is a relatively small area of study compared to British or American history. If adding the search term Canada to your search words doesn't seem to narrow things down, limit your search by selecting Subject from the options on the right side, then choose Canada (or another relevant subject tag) from the list of options.
Pro Tip
Did you know you can lock your filters in place in Library Search? Hover your cursor over the limit and click to look it in place. Now, even if you change your search terms, the limit will stay in place.
You can start your search for journal articles using LibrarySearch - which is the Books, Articles and More search box on the MRU Library. If you find yourself overwhelmed with results there, you can try some of the following journal article databases which search fewer, but potentially more relevant, journals.
Use the same strategies you used to find scholarly books - look for articles about author's life, the place and time period in which they lived, and their significance using relevant search terms to describe them.
Not sure if your source is a scholarly article? They typically have the following characteristics:
Be aware of these popular, non-scholarly magazines
Digital library of academic journals, ebooks and primary sources. Includes content across the humanities, social sciences, and sciences.
This video explains how to recognize scholarly sources in History, and how to use LibrarySearch to find them.