Digital Literacy and Reference Librarian
Louis J. Blume Library
One Camino Santa Maria, San Antonio, TX 78228-8608
What is a secondary source?
A secondary source discusses, analyzes, and interprets a topic. Typically, in history, a secondary source will cite both primary sources and other secondary sources used to develop the author's argument. A historian's work, either a book or journal article, typically is a secondary source. Your senior thesis will be a secondary work.
You will want to use secondary sources for a couple of key reasons: 1) to gain a clear understanding of the events, time, people, places for a topic, and 2) to use the work cited to identify key primary sources.
Secondary sources are contextual. So, for instance, a newspaper article may be primary source for one topic (an first hand account from the time being studied) OR if could be a secondary source (discussion of an event that occurred in the past).
The Craft of Research by Publication Date: 2016eBook. ProQuest.
The first six chapters are the best in looking at research as an unfolding series of questions.
Databases: Locate secondary sources
The databases listed here are places to start when searching for secondary sources.
- Choice Reviews This link opens in a new windowSince its founding in 1964, Choice has led the industry in high-quality evaluations of nonfiction academic writing. Choice Reviews and its print companion, Choice magazine, are invaluable sources of bibliographic reference and recommendation for both collection development and individual research. Choice Reviews and Choice publish 4,200 new reviews annually, contain over 200,000 reviews of academic monographs, and serve 2,400 institutions worldwide.
- Discover This link opens in a new window
Blume Library's primary search tool. This robust feature helps scholars find scholarly journals and articles, books, eBooks, music, videos, government information, and more. Input the keywords of your research to generate a results list full of articles and items covering the topic. Use boolean phrases (AND, OR, NOT) and other limiters to focus a search or modify a results list. This tool searches most of the Blume Library holdings including the Library Catalog of physical items and eResources.
Learn more about this powerful resource: DISCOVER
Reach out to a Blume Librarian for research assistance: RESEARCH ASSISTANCE - JSTOR This link opens in a new windowJSTOR journals, books, images, and primary sources are integrated into a single, robust platform that uses the latest digital technologies and best practices. JSTOR provides access to over 12 million journal articles, books, images, and primary sources in 75 disciplines.
Full runs of journals from more than 2,800 top scholarly journals in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences. More than 100,000 ebooks from 250+ renowned scholarly publishers, integrated with journals and primary sources on JSTOR. This source also includes open-access articles!
WorldCat Search Options
WorldCat searches library collections across the United States and the world.
WorldCat Discovery is the public version of WorldCat at https://www.worldcat.org. WorldCat is linked in Google Books, Goodreads, and more.
The Blume Library also subscribes to WorldCat FirstSearch. FirstSearch offers precision searching where you can input many types of limits. For instance, you can sort your results by number of libraries that own the item which can impact the ease or challenge of receiving an interlibrary loan.
- WorldCat Discovery This link opens in a new windowPublic WorldCat search interface. Information on the holdings of the world's libraries.
- WorldCat FirstSearch This link opens in a new windowSubscription interface. Choose this version if you want to use advanced searching techniques, including sorting by number of libraries who own an item. WorldCat provides information on the holdings of the world's libraries. The public version, designed for most users, is available online at worldcat.org and on the databases list.
