LibGuides: MC 202: Feeding the 9 Billion: Food Security in Global Context: Secondary Sources

What are secondary sources?

Secondary sources are materials which provide an interpretation, analysis or discussion of information originally presented elsewhere. This is in contrast to primary materials which provide first-hand evidence. What counts as a secondary source depends heavily on the topic you are writing about and the discipline you are working within.

Scholarly articles are a common type of secondary source:

These are written by experts and scholars, and reviewed by other scholars in the same field (peer review)
They are published in journals which usually are focused on one topic (example: American Studies is a journal focused on American culture)
They provide in-depth analysis on a specific topic (often quite narrow!)
They can be used to help you build an argument in a research paper

Article Databases

Food and Agriculture

AGRICOLA
1970-
Covers every major agricultural subject, including agricultural engineering and marketing, animal breeding, entomology, environmental pollution, farm management, foods and feeds, pesticides, rural sociology, veterinary medicine, and water resources. Citations consist of journal articles, book chapters, monographs, conference proceedings, serials, technical reports, and other materials on a range of agricultural topics.
CAB Abstracts
International coverage of agriculture in the broadest sense, including human nutrition.
Food Science and Technology Abstracts (FSTA)
Covers all areas of food science, food technology, and human nutrition, including basic food science, biotechnology, toxicology, packaging, and engineering.
Food Studies Online
Examples of topics covered in the collection: Organic Farming/Small Farms, School lunch programs, Childhood nutrition, Marketing and advertising, Packaging, Food industry, Environmental impact of GMOs, US food programs during WWI/WWII, Food security, Famine, Vegetarianism, Labor practices, Food safety, Wine making, Obesity, Gender roles through history, Food habits around the world and more.

General Databases

Depending on your topic, you may find additional useful information in one of the following databases

Social Sciences Full Text
Includes social sciences academic journals, includes full-text and citations.
PAIS International
Covers issues related to food and public policy/public affairs.
Environment Complete
Coverage of food as it intersects with environmental issues such as sustainable agriculture, natural resources, geography, pollution & waste management, public policy, social impacts, urban planning, and more.
JSTOR Sustainability Journals and Research Reports
Explore journals and research reports on environmental stresses and their impact on society. Research spans the Biological Sciences, Business & Economics, Ecology, Environmental Sciences, Law, Public Health, Urban Studies, and many other disciplines.
Anthropology Plus
Useful for researching the foodways and food habits of various cultures.
PsycINFO including PsycARTICLES
Useful for psychosocial aspects of food and eating.
EconLit
Contains citations, with abstracts, to articles from more than 400 economics journals. In addition, subject indexing and abstracts of books and subject indexing of dissertation titles are included.
PubMed (Medline)
The premier resource for searching the world's scholarly and professional biomedical and health sciences literature (including human nutrition, dietary habits, nutritional status, etc.).