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HIST 200: Introduction to Research

Information guide designed to assist you begin your historical research

What Are Secondary Sources?

"A secondary source is second-hand information written or created after an event. Secondary sources may summarize, interpret, review, or criticize existing events or works.  Secondary sources were written or created after an event by people who were not at the original event. Secondary sources can be many formats including books, articles, encyclopedias, textbooks, or a scholar’s interpretation of past events or conditions." (Source)

Articles

This list contains links to Pepperdine provided databases, an organized and searchable collection of information, which contain scholarly articles useful to your research. For any assistance searching these, understanding your results, or recommendations on which databases to search, please contact me directly.

Multidisciplinary Databases. These databases tend to cover a wider range of topics, especially compared to those below.

Specialized Databases. These databases contain information around more specific topics than those above.

Books

 

Tips for searching:

  • After you submit a search, use the filters to improve your results. You can filter between print and ebook, articles, which Pepperdine library has it, and more!
  • Use quotation marks around phrases to enhance your results. For example "world war" will produce only results that contain those two words together and in that order
  • Use TI: before your search words to search just the titles of things and use AU: before an author's name to see their works

Browsing the shelves at one of our libraries? Look for books with the following letters on their labels:

  • C - Auxiliary Sciences of History
  • D - World History and History of Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, New Zealand, etc.
  • E-F - History of Americas
  • G - Geography, Anthropology, Recreation

Need Books or Articles We Do Not Own?

If you find any articles, books, or book chapters you would like to read but cannot access through the Pepperdine Libraries you can make a request to ask other libraries to send it to you. To request something, either locate it using the library search and click the request button on the item page or fill out the form manually following this link: https://pepperdine.account.worldcat.org/account/requests/

You can learn more about interlibrary loan through this guide here: https://infoguides.pepperdine.edu/interlibraryloan