Research Help for History Students: Secondary Sources

While the bulk of your research will often come from primary  sources, you will also need secondary sources to support your arguments and claims in your paper.  

Secondary sources use primary sources to analyze and make arguments about the past.  They are generally written by a scholar who did not experience the event they are describing. These sources can take many forms depending on the discipline, but for history they are generally books and articles.  

Now, as you may already know, not all books and articles are considered worthy sources for a paper.  The sub-pages to this section will go in to more detail on what is considered a good source and what should be pushed aside.

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