Secondary Sources are secondhand sources. They were created by historians who drew their information from primary sources. The most typical types of secondary sources are books and academic journal articles.
Historians find some of their best books by browsing the shelves. Open the document below for a guide to browsing the Gorgas Library for history books:
Contains all the records cataloged by OCLC member libraries. Offers millions of bibliographic records. Includes records representing 400 languages.
HathiTrust is a partnership of research institutions committed to digital preservation of the cultural record. The Digital Library provides access to public domain and some in-copyright content from a variety of sources, including Google, the Internet Archive, Microsoft, and in-house partner institution initiatives. Materials are available to the extent permitted by copyright law.
HathiTrust catalog records are included in Scout, but not in the Libraries’ Catalog.
Images of the full text of many scholarly titles in a range of subject areas, including literature, biological sciences, economics, finance, and statistics. Search the archive or pull up a specific article. Artstor is now available on the JSTOR platform.
Project MUSE provides full-text access scholarly journals in the humanities and social sciences. The database is a collaboration between Johns Hopkins University and other university presses and not-for-profit publishers. Also included are the UPCC collections in Asian and Pacific Studies, and Poetry, Fiction and Creative Non-Fiction.
Covers the history of the world (excluding the United States and Canada) from 1450 to the present.
Provides historical and cultural coverage of the United States and Canada from prehistory to the present. Includes information abstracted from journals published worldwide.
Google Scholar is a freely available scholarly search engine that allows you to search across many disciplines and sources: peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts and articles – from academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories, universities and other scholarly organizations.
A collection of materials pertaining to the Middle Ages and Renaissance (400-1700). The platform contains databases, books, and journals.
IMB, a project of the Medieval Academy of America, is an interdisciplinary bibliography of articles in journals, conference proceedings, essay collections, and festschriften, relating to the Middle Ages in Europe, North Africa, and the Near East, 300-1500. It is cross-searchable with the Bibliographie de Civilisation Médiévale and contains live links to the Lexikon des Mittelalters and the International Encyclopaedia for the Middle Ages.
ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials is the full text version of the ATLA Religion Database. This database provides a collection of major religious and theology journals selected by religion scholars in the United States.
List articles, books, book chapters, book reviews, dissertations, and selected government publications published in the United States and Canada and some European countries on East-Central Europe, Russia, Soviet Union and the former Soviet republics.
The Bibliography of British and Irish History offers online access to bibliographic data on British, Irish, and interdisciplinary history topics, including race, ethnicity, gender, sexual identity, social class, disability, and mental health.
The Bibliography of Asian Studies (BAS) is a comprehensive resource for students and scholars interested in East, Southeast, and South Asia, providing citations and full-text of various journal articles and proceedings.
GreenFILE is a research database that explores the connections between humans and the environment, covering topics like global warming, recycling, and alternative fuel sources. It includes scholarly articles, government documents, and reports.
Dissertations & Theses can be used as secondary sources and in some cases it may be easier to find a dissertation or thesis that addresses your specific topic.
Searchable and browsable database of dissertations and theses from around the world, 1743 to present.
ProQuest Dissertations and Theses: Global (PQDTGlobal) is the world's most comprehensive collection of full-text dissertations and theses. As the official digital dissertations archive for the Library of Congress and as the database of record for graduate research, PQDTGlobal includes millions of searchable citations to dissertations and theses from 1861 to the present day together with over a million full-text dissertations that are available for download in PDF format. Over 2.1 million titles are available for purchase as printed copies. The database offers full text for most of the dissertations added since 1997 and strong retrospective full-text coverage for older graduate works. It also includes PQDT UK & Ireland content.
More than 70,000 new full-text dissertations and theses are added to the database each year through dissertations publishing partnerships with 700 leading academic institutions worldwide, and collaborative retrospective digitization of dissertations. Full-text dissertations are archived as submitted by the degree-granting institution. Some will be native PDF, some PDF image.
Each dissertation published since July, 1980 includes a 350-word abstract written by the author. Master's theses published since 1988 include 150-word abstracts. Simple bibliographic citations are available for dissertations dating from 1637. Where available, PQDTGlobal provides 24-page previews of dissertations and theses.
Subject coverage
Note: Full text for certain publications is subject to market availability.
Indexes theses written in participating colleges and universities the United Kingdom. Some of the full-texts are free; others are available for a fee.
The American National Biography Online provides information about prominent people from all eras who have influenced and shaped American history and culture. It contains detailed articles, internal cross-references, bibliographies, photographs and illustrations, and links to external web resources.
Database of biographies of men and women who have shaped British history.
Access limited to 3 simultaneous users.
The Oxford Handbooks in this online edition provide topic overviews and critical surveys of the current state of scholarship for a wide range of topics. Subject areas include Architecture, Business & Management, Classical Studies, Criminology & Criminal Justice, Economics & Finance, History, Law, Linguistics, Literature, Music, Philosophy, Political Science, Psychology, and Religion.
Gale Virtual Reference Library is a database of encyclopedias, almanacs, and specialized reference sources for multidisciplinary research.