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.
- Libraries 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!
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:
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 ("The Falklands War") or go to subject and browse the history section.
Scholarly Journal Articles
- JSTORImages 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.
- Project MuseProject MUSE provides full-text access to more than 400 scholarly journals in the humanities and social sciences.
- Historical AbstractsA bibliographic reference to the history of the world from 1450 to the present (excluding the United States and Canada). Currently over 2,000 journals published throughout the world are covered.
- America: History & Life with Full TextProvides historical coverage of the United States and Canada from prehistory to the present. Includes information abstracted from over 2,000 journals published worldwide.
- Hispanic American Periodicals Index (HAPI) OnlineHAPI is an index to more than 275,000 journal articles about Central America, South America, the Caribbean, and Hispanics/Latinos in the United States.
- Handbook of Latin American StudiesSelective annotated bibliography of scholarly works on Latin America published since 1936.
- 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.
Theses & Dissertations
- ProQuest Dissertations & ThesesIncludes citations, some abstracts, and many full texts for dissertations and theses ranging from the first U.S. dissertation, accepted in 1861, to those accepted as recently as last semester. Also includes most University of Alabama dissertations & theses from 1995 forward.