FINDING
SOURCES FOR A RESEARCH PAPER
Primary and
Secondary Sources
The sources that you might use for a history research paper can be
divided into primary and secondary sources.
A primary sources is any item that has a direct
connection to the topic you are studying.
Thus, if you are studying Abraham Lincoln, primary sources would
include anything that Lincoln wrote or anything written about him by persons
who knew him. These written
materials might have been published and thus available in libraries; if
unpublished, the original manuscripts are housed in public and private
archives and libraries (or in the personal collections of descendants or of
manuscript collectors). In
addition to written documents, primary sources for various topics can include
coins, clothing, buildings, battlefields, music, photographs, paintings, and
so on.
Secondary sources are those items not directly connected to the topic
being studied. A biography of
Abraham Lincoln written by a history professor in 1995 would be a secondary
source, for that historian had no direct connection to Abraham Lincoln.
In writing the book, however, the historian would have used many
primary sources.
Ideally, a student writing a history research paper should use a
combination of primary and secondary sources.
If you are studying Abraham Lincoln, you should
make your own analysis of the Gettysburg Address and his other writings
while also using the insights of historians who have
written about Lincoln.
How many primary and secondary works should you consult?
There is no easy way to answer that question.
The proper amount will depend in part on the topic and in part on the
length of your paper. A ten-page
paper written as part of a History course will involve less research than a
much longer senior thesis or honors project.
Consult with your professor regarding the amount of research that will
be expected for your assignment.
Locating
Written Materials for Your Topic
Some topics (for example, on state or local history) might involve interviewing
people, visiting museums to look at artifacts, traveling to an
archive to read an unpublished manuscript, or walking over the grounds of a
cemetery or a battlefield. Most
often, however, a student working on a paper during a semester will be using
written materials in a library. The
discussion below therefore concentrates on the kind of work that a typical
undergraduate student might need to perform.
Once you have selected a topic for a research paper, how do you begin to
find books and articles? This can
be a daunting prospect at the very beginning of a project, when you don’t
know the name of any author or the title of any book or article on the topic.
Here is a brief outline of some of the more common ways of accumulating
a list of materials. Students should be aware that their research is not limited
to books and articles located in Friedsam Memorial Library.
If you find a reference to something not available in our library, you
can order it from Interlibrary
Loan.
RESEARCH TIPS:
-
Look in the text books assigned for your course.
Very often these books have bibliographies or guides to further
reading. There you might find
a reference to some books and articles that can get you started.
-
Consult a general encyclopedia, such as the Encyclopedia
Britannica. Articles
there can give you a brief introduction to your topic and perhaps some
guides to further reading. Note:
Encyclopedias are useful in getting one started on a topic, but generally
are not considered “major” sources for your final paper.
In other words, don’t quote from encyclopedias or include them in
your bibliography.
-
Go to FRIAR, the online database for Friedsam Memorial Library. If you don’t know the names of authors or the titles of
books on your topic, do a keyword search.
In other words, click on the line for keyword and type in a word or
phrase (eg, “Holocaust,” or “American Revolution,” or
“slavery”). The FRIAR system will then give you a listing of all books
that contain the word in the title or in the description of the book.
You should do keyword searches using several different terms to
ensure that you are retrieving references to all books related to your
topic. If, for example, your
topic is the Holocaust, you might also try keyword searches for terms like
“final solution,” “Jews,” or “Auschwitz.”
Click here to connect to FRIAR
The password you should use is: mpac.
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Go to the online databases for other, larger libraries.
The holdings in Friedsam Memorial Library are excellent for a
university of our size, but our library is not nearly as large as those of
major universities. The
catalogs of thousands of libraries worldwide are available on the
Internet. The two that I recommend most highly are those of the Library
of Congress and Harvard University. Why
should a St. Bonaventure student want to use Harvard’s catalog?
The reason is that Harvard, the Library of Congress, and other huge
libraries will have many more books than does Friedsam.
You can go to the online catalogs of Harvard or the Library of
Congress, do a keyword search on “Holocaust,” and find many more books
beyond those possessed by Friedsam.
If you find a reference to a book in Harvard or the Library of
Congress, take note of its author, title, publisher, year.
Then check to see if the book is in Friedsam.
If it is not in Friedsam, you can order it via interlibrary loan.
Harvard University.
Library of Congress.
-
Library shelves. When
you go into the Friedsam stacks to find a particular book, be sure to
examine the other books on the shelf.
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The following are some of the principal guides to newspaper and
journal articles of use to historians.
All of these are available in the reference section of Friedsam
Memorial Library. For their
call numbers, look them up in FRIAR: If Friedsam does not subscribe to a
particular newspaper, magazine or journal, you can order an article from
Interlibrary Loan in the same way you can order books.
Readers’
Guide to Periodical Literature. Useful for finding articles in popular magazines and major newspapers.
Humanities
Index.
A thorough listing of scholarly journal articles in fields like
History, Literature, Philosophy, and Theology.
Historical
Abstracts. An extensive listing of scholarly articles covering Europe, Asia, and
all other parts of the world–excluding the United States.
Gives a brief summary of every article.
America:
History and Life.
Similar to Historical Abstracts, but concentrates solely on the
United States.
Social
Sciences Index. Lists
scholarly articles in History, Political Science, Economics,
Sociology, Geography, Psychology,
and other fields.
1.
EbscoHost. This database
contains several distinct sub-databases.
The one of most use to historians in Academic Search Elite.
Use of EbscoHost is limited to SBU faculty and students and requires a
special login name and password. Contact
the reference department in the library in order to obtain this information (phone
716-375-2164 or email ref@sbu.edu).
Academic Search Elite contains references to (and, in some cases, the
full text of) articles and reviews from over 1000 scholarly and popular
periodicals. Once you have the
login name and password, you can use EbscoHost by going to the Friedsam
memorial Library homepage.
EbscoHost
2.
Lexis-Nexis. This database
contains newspaper and magazine articles, book reviews, press releases, wire
service reports, and other items from
thousands of publications–from the U.S. and around the world.
The earliest articles go back to about 1980.
SBU pays for Lexis-Nexis. Unlike
EBSCOhost, Lexis-Nexis does not require a password.
However, to gain access to it you must be using a computer in the
campus network (in a campus computer lab, in the library, or in your dorm
room). You can find Lexis-Nexis by going to the Friedsam homepage.
Lexis-Nexis
3.
Friedsam Memorial Library also
subscribes to other databases useful for a wide variety of research
projects. These include Books in Print, PsychInfo, ERIC and
others.
Online
databases.
To top of writing guide.