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:
You can search for scholarly articles in two ways. First, via a general search over all library holdings. If performing a general search, it is important to use specific keywords to limit results to only those closely related to your topic (see tips below). Second, you can choose a subject-specific database and perform your keyword search there. When using a database, topics unrelated to the discipline of your interest have already been filtered out; you will receive fewer (but hopefully better!) results when searching.
If you are searching for a phrase, such as spontaneous combustion or greater rice weevil, put the entire phrase in double quotes. This will tell the search engine to only find results that contain the exact phrase, rather than one or two of the individual words.
If you have two or more words or concepts that you want to find, use AND (must be capitalized) to tell the search engine to only look for items that contain both words.
Often, there is more than one way to talk about your topic. For example, if you are looking at the study habits of college students, you could look for "study strategies," "study habits," "ways of studying," "study methods" etc. Some phrases might be better than others. If you want to try looking for multiple variations of the same word or phrase in a single search, use OR (all capitals) to tell the search engine to find material with any of the words you've included.
You can even get fancy and use both AND and OR:
**Tip** The first two databases (and several databases below) use the same interface (i.e. they all look the same). At the top of the page, above the search box, you'll see "Searching: ..." with the name of the database. To the right, you can click on "choose databases" and then you can choose to search all three in one search.
If you want to browse the stacks in the section that will most likely contain useful books, go to the west basement in the following call number ranges:
D World History, not including America
D720-728 Period between World Wars (1919-1939)
D731-838 World War II (1939-1945)
D804 contains a concentration of work on the Holocaust
If you want to search online for a book in our collection, click on Books & Media on the library's homepage (lib.msu.edu).
Search using keywords like you would for articles. OR, use Library of Congress Subject Headings:
