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.
 

⇒ Tertiary Sources

• 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.
• You can find tertiary sources on the Background Sources tab of this guide, or  by searching in LibrarySearch and filtering by Resource Type: Reference Entries

⇒ Types of Scholarly 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.
 

⇒ Find Secondary Sources in MRU LibrarySearch 

Try limiting searches by:

• using the sidebar options to limit results to only relevant subjects, or to preferred resource type, e.g., books or articles
• 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 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

⇒ 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

Use LibrarySearch (search box on the MRU Library homepage) to answer the following questions. Be prepared to briefly discuss your answers as part of a class discussion.

1) Does the library own the following books? Where or how would you find them in order to read them? Be specific.

• Eisenhower, science advice, and the nuclear test-ban debate, 1945-1963
• Dr. Strangelove's America : society and culture in the atomic age
• Operation crossroads: The atomic tests at Bikini Atoll

2) Are the books above scholarly? How can you tell? (hint: look closely at the library catalog record, and/or skim the first few pages of the book)

3) Now find TWO scholarly books available at MRU that discuss the history of the environmental impact of American nuclear testing. Avoid copying and pasting the topic into the search box; instead, use keywords from the topic. 

- Can you find the table of contents/chapter headings of the books? How is the table of contents helpful when doing research?

4) Can you find the citation generator in LibrarySearch to generate a Chicago style citation for one of the above?

Copy and paste your book titles here

1) On the Articles tab of this guide, go to the database America History & Life and find the following articles:

>>> "Environmental Awareness in the Atomic Age: Radioecologists and Nuclear Technology" by Rachel Rothschild
>>> "Downwind: A People's History of the Nuclear West" by Andrew Kirk

2) Skim the descriptions and the first few pages of each of article and consider the following questions. Be prepared to chat about your answers:

>>> Is this source scholarly? (Here is some advice on recognizing scholarly sources)

>>> How could the article lead you to additional sources on the same/similar topics? 

3) Still within the database America History and Life, find one or two scholarly articles directly related to the topic of the role of sports in American during the Cold War. Avoid copying and pasting the topic into the search box; instead, use keywords from the topic. 

>>> Find and read the abstract for the article to assess for relevance.

>>> Are there any alternate terms that could help you improve your search? 

>>> Can you find tools or functions within the database to help improve your search results?

Copy and paste your journal article titles here

What Are Historical Primary Sources?

Primary sources are documents or other items 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 that are broadly helpful in undergraduate History courses, and relatively easy to find, include:

• Laws, policies and official reports
• Newspaper articles
• Organizational records, publications or propaganda
• Memoirs, personal narratives, diaries and letters

⇒ Where 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

• 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

• Use terminology from the time period you are studying - e.g., Great War vs. World War

• Experiment with different terms, e.g. nuclear vs. atomic.

• Try going to the advanced search and searching for your terms in the title of the 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.
• More tips for finding primary sources

HANDS ON

1) Open this historical newspaper database: New York Times 1851-

2) Search for news articles reporting on the United States bombing of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. If you need some background information about these bombings,  skim this encyclopedia entry, to get the basic facts including dates, then use what you learn to help you find the articles. 

Keep searches simple. Try searching for key names, places, events relating to the crisis. USE THE DATE LIMITER ON THE LEFT PANEL.

3) Try to find at least one article that reports on the events. See the Primary Source Search Tips listed above for advice.

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

For better searching, think of multiple ways to describe your topic and switch terms occasionally

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.

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