What are Secondary Sources?
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.
Books at Gorgas Library
- ScoutUse Scout to find books, eBooks, scholarly journal articles, magazine articles, newspapers, and more.
- Classic CatalogThe classic catalog is best for print books that we have on the shelves here at Gorgas. Can also be used to find government documents
Finding Books on WorldCat
- WorldCat FirstSearch This link opens in a new window
Contains all the records cataloged by OCLC member libraries. Offers millions of bibliographic records. Includes records representing 400 languages.
- Interlibrary LoanUse Interlibrary loan to request any books, journal articles, theses/dissertations, newspapers, or other sources that the university libraries don't have. With print books and some other sources you may have to wait 1-2 weeks for them to be delivered, but electronic copies of things like scholarly journal articles can be accessed in a matter of days!
Academic Journal Articles
- JSTOR This link opens in a new window
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 This link opens in a new window
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.
- Historical Abstracts with Full Text This link opens in a new window
Covers the history of the world (excluding the United States and Canada) from 1450 to the present.
- America: History & Life with Full Text This link opens in a new window
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 This link opens in a new window
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.
- ScoutYou can also find scholarly journal articles on Scout.
eBooks
- HathiTrust Digital Library This link opens in a new window
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.
- ScoutUse Scout to find books, eBooks, scholarly journal articles, etc.
Oxford Reference Online
- Oxford Reference OnlineEither search for your topic or go to subject and browse the history section.
Dissertations & Theses
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.
- ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global This link opens in a new window
Searchable and browsable database of dissertations and theses from around the world, 1743 to present.
Browsing the Gorgas Library
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: