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Research Guides@Tufts

History (General)

This research guide is intended as a starting point for historical research.

How to Use This Guide

Welcome to the Tisch Library guide to historical research!

This guide is organized by types of resources:

  • Background & context - Background information generally comes from reference sources, which provide a scholarly discussion that summarizes and synthesizes secondary sources. Typically, a reference source does not contain original research. These sources provide important background and contextual information on your subject. Reference sources include bibliographies, dictionaries, encyclopedias, and handbooks. You can use this type of source to help narrow your research topic, find data to support your thesis, and identify keywords and main ideas to use as search terms.
  • Primary sources - A primary source is a document, image, artifact, or dataset that provides first-hand testimony or direct evidence concerning the object of research. Primary sources may include, but are not limited to, artwork, correspondence, diaries, interviews, literary texts, material artifacts, newspapers, speeches, statistics, and videos. Primary sources are useful for providing evidence on your topic.
  • Secondary sources - A secondary source is a scholarly discussion based on primary sources. Typically, a secondary source contains original research. Secondary sources include articles, blogs, books, lectures, podcasts, and scientific reports. Secondary sources are useful for in-depth analysis of your topic and for learning about scholarly perspectives on your topic.

Primary Sources in JumboSearch

The library catalog is a great place to start your research where you can find many books and articles.

To find primary sources in the catalog, try pairing one of the subject terms listed below with other search terms relevant to your project. For example, if you are interested in the civil right movement, you could search for "Civil Rights" as a keyword and "speeches, addresses, etc." as a subject term. Here is an example of what that search would look like. The following are useful subject terms for finding primary sources:

Subjects: History