Secondary Sources
- Secondary sources (books, chapters in books and academic articles) interpret historical events.
- Generally, they are based on primary source material and involve analysis of this material.
- The Library catalogue and the Canadian Business and Current Affairs database will help supply you with your required secondary sources.
Define and focus your topic/theme
- Broad topics can be defined further in the catalogue by using specific people, events or more focused subject terms
- For example, Gender could be further defined/focused to find resources. A search for gender would find too many resources in the library catalogue and they may not be related to Canada or history or your photograph.
For better results use Boolean Searching. Boolean searching uses AND, OR and NOT to help you find the best resources available on your topic.
Examples using AND
- Women and prostitution and Canada
- Native women and legal status
- Immigrants and history and Canada
- Racism and law and Canada
- Youth justice and Canada
Examples using AND and OR
- (Racism or prejeduice) and (legal or law) and Canad*
Truncation can help expand your search. For example you can use *(shift 8) to truncate a word.
Examples
- Immigra* (finds all the resources with the word immigrants or immigration)
- Canad* (finds all the resources with the word Canadian or Canada)