Tertiary sources including encyclopedias, historical dictionaries, handbooks and companion guides provide helpful overviews, including key facts, dates, people, place and issues associated with historical topics.They are often known as background or reference sources.

They gather and synthesize existing information to make it easy to find and understand, and are an excellent starting point in most research projects.

Example tertiary source: psychiatry - history in the Oxford Companion to Medicine, 3rd edition

• Oxford Reference - a large collection of encyclopedias, dictionaries and other tertiary works. START HERE when looking for background information; use the search box in the upper right corner.
• World History in Context - database of various tertiary, primary and secondary sources. Limit search results to reference for background information.
• Cambridge Historical Dictionary of Disease
• Cambridge World History of Human Disease, ed. Kenneth F. Kiple et al. 
• Companion Encyclopedia of the History of Medicine, eds. B.F Bynum and Roy Porter
• Oxford Companion to the Body, eds. Colin Blakemore and Sheila Jennet.
•  Oxford Handbook of the History of Medicine, ed. Mark Jackson
• The Oxford Handbook of Science and Medicine in the Classical World, eds. Paul Keyser and John Scarborough
• Routledge Handbook of Chinese Medicine, ed. Vivienne Lo, et al.

Search tips: Keep searches simple within tertiary sources, one or two words usually works best, e.g. 

- hospital

- hospital history
 

⇒ Find More Tertiary Sources:

• on the Background Sources tab of this research guide. 
• by searching in LibrarySearch and filtering by Resource Type: Reference Entries

Video: Finding and Recognizing Tertiary Sources for History 
2:28 minutes

In the discipline of History, secondary sources interpret and analyze primary sources, and are removed in time from the events they discuss. They can be scholarly or non-scholarly/popular. The secondary sources your rely on for this course should come from the academic discipline of History, authors should be historians, and journal articles should come from History journals. 

Example secondary source - journal article: The Ethics of Animal Experimentation in Seventeenth-Century England

Example secondary source - scholarly book: Mending Bodies, Saving Souls : A History of Hospitals

⇒ Find Secondary Sources in MRU LibrarySearch 

Try limiting searches by:

• using the sidebar options (e.g. limit results to only relevant subjects, or to preferred resource type, e.g., books)
• using the advanced search to search for important terms in the subject or title fields on the drop-down menus.
• refining results to only peer-reviewed sources (searches only within scholarly journals and EXCLUDES books)
• Sign in for enhanced results, to save "pinned" favourites lists and search queries.

⇒ Find Secondary Sources in a History Specific or Humanities Database

Still looking for information or overwhelmed by LibrarySearch results? Try a history specific database:

• Historical Abstracts - Use the advanced search function to search for research on a specific historical time period.
• International Medieval Bibliography - Look for the blue FIND FULL TEXT button to see if MRU has access to individual articles/items.
• JStor - Use the advanced search function to limit your search to only HISTORY journals
• Or try one of MRU's other humanties databases
   

⇒ Find Secondary Sources Via Google Scholar

• Be sure to set up Library Links to Mount Royal University within the settings of Google Scholar.
   

⇒ Secondary Source Search tips

• Construct search queries using terms you imagine academics would use; avoid slang and abbreviations; make note of relevant terms as you search and skim sources
• Use key words that reflect the key concepts in your topic, and avoid long strings of natural language
  • Good search: contagion history early modern
  • Poor search: history of contagion in the early modern period
• Experiment with different search terms to describe your topic
• Put “Quotation Marks Around Your Search" to search for exact phrases, e.g. "early modern"  
• Use OR between your ideas to search for EITHER term e.g. anesthesthia OR pain
• Put * after the root of a word to look for multiple endings e.g. psyc* will find psychology, psychiatry, psychiatric, psychotic

Video: Finding and Recognizing Scholarly Secondary Sources for History Assignments

Elements of a scholarly secondary source -- 00:56
Why we use books as well as journals are important in History research --1:51
Using LibrarySearch to find sources -- 3:32
Using filters in LibrarySearch -- 7:32
 

Historical Primary Sources: Documents or other artefacts created at the time in history under study, generally by a person or group that witnessed, participated in or contributed to the events of the day in some way. Primary sources take many forms, and the most appropriate or helpful type of primary source will depend on your topic.

Some types of primary sources related to the history of health, medicine and disease include:

Official reports, government records, health policies:  

• Report of an investigation into the causes of malaria in Bombay and the measures necessary for its control, by Charles A. Bentley, Malaria Investigation Committee, 1911.
• Debates in Parliament respecting the Jennerian discovery, Great Britain. Parliament, House of Commons Committee on Dr. Jenner's Petition, 1808.

Research studies, medical and scientific commentary: 

• Tuberculosis in Lunatic Asylums, The British Medical Journal Vol. 2, No. 2182 (Oct. 25, 1902); 
• An account of the rise and attempts, of a way to conveigh liquors immediately into the mass of blood, Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society, 1665.

Images: 

• Original hypodermic syringe of Dr. Alexander Wood. The first used in Great Britain, Wellcome Collection.
• Vaccination against smallpox: a young Turkmen being vaccinated, contrasted with an elderly Turkmen who is blinded and disfigured by smallpox. Colour lithograph, Wellcome Collection, 193-.

Materia medica / pharmacological texts: 

• Culpeper's complete herbal: consisting of a comprehensive description of nearly all herbs with their medicinal properties and directions for compounding the medicines extracted from them, by Nicholas Culpeper, 1616-1654.

⇒ Where to find primary sources related to this course

Specialized collections:

• British Medical Journal: Well known medical journal, access from 1857-1988. Access issues from 1840-1856 here.
• Lancet: British medical journal, access from 1823-1927 ish. 
• ***Medical Heritage Library: Good starting point for many topics. Digitized medical rare books, pamphlets, journals, and films with representative works from each of the past six centuries, from medical libraries around the world. Use the search this collection option nearer the centre of the screen.
• Medical History of British India:  Reports related to disease, public health and medical research in British India between around 1850 to 1950.
• Perseus Project Greek & Roman Texts: Collection of ancient texts, include the works of Galen and Hippocrates.
• Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 1776 - 1886 and more: The oldest English language scientific journal, covering topics of scientific importance within the physical, mathematical and engineering sciences. Access issues from other years here.
• ***Wellcome Collection:  Good starting point for many topics. Covers a wide variety of topics, with strength in the areas of mental health, sex and sexual health, genetics, public health, and 19th-century books. Includes many images. After running a search, be sure to limit location to online only. 

Basic tools

• On Google - add the terms primary sources or primary documents to your search query e.g., Greek medicine 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., medieval medicine sources 
    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 to limit only to books (reprinted primary sources usually take the form of a book).
•  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.
   

⇒ Primary Source Search Tips

• Use terminology from the time period you are studying - e.g., melancholy vs. lunacy vs. madness vs. mental illness

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

• Be methodical - if you know the time frame of an event, browse multiple editions or publications from that time range for potential mentions of the topic/event.

Primary Sources for History

Video Chapters
1:42 - General tips for finding primary sources
4:03 - Finding primary sources in MRU LibrarySearch
5:29 - Finding primary sources via Google
6:55 - Finding primary sources via MRU History Guide, including historical newspapers

Visit the Primary Sources tab of this guide for more advice and access to MRU's digital primary source collections. 

MRU has access to several image collections that may be helpful for your StoryMap. They include:

ArtStor - High quality images from JStor

Bridgeman Art Library Archive - Be sure to limit keyword searches to images.

Oxford Art Online - Art images; note that you can browse or limit searches by time period

Smithsonian Open Access - millions of images from their museum and archives collections.

Wellcome Collection - From your search results, limit by FORMAT to digital images.

Google Images - To find copyright friendly images, use the TOOLS option and limit by USAGE RIGHTS to Creative Commons.

Other - Primary source databases, including newspaper and magazine collections and many others, often include image searches in their advanced search function. 

MRU Chicago Style Citation Resources: Includes a guide for using Chicago style, examples, and instructions for inserting footnotes.

Try simple searches within a relevant scholarly journal, such as:

• Bulletin of the History of Medicine
• Journal of the History of Medicine
• Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences
• Medical history
• Social History of Medicine

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.