Secondary Historical Sources

“Quotes” and the intitle: command

When searching for a phrase in Google Scholar use quotes to "lock" the phrase in place ...   e.g.,  "cold war"

The intitle: command allows you to search for a word or phrase in the titles of articles and books ... e.g.,  intitle:"Ottoman Empire" ...
e.g., intitle:Hittite  

Important - the intitle: command must be typed in all lower-case letters and the word or phrase to be searched must be immediately adjacent to the colon at the end of the intitle: command.

Set your publication date to recent years.

Google Scholar ranks your results in part based on the number of times an article has been cited.  Since it takes a while for even the best research articles to accumulate a large number of citations this means that Google Scholar will tend to display older research.

Since Google Scholar only displays roughly 400 results - it might be useful to reset the search results to multiple publication date options for topics that produce many results ... e.g.,  1985-2023  or 2000-2023 or 2010-2023 or 2020-2023 

Problems with Google Scholar:

Though Google Scholar covers a vast expanse of research it is also very problematic. For each potential secondary source you will need to answer the following questions:

Is this a an article from a peer-reviewed history journal?

or

Is this a scholarly book? 

Peer-reviewed history journal? Scholarly book?

Many of the sources in Google Scholar are neither journal articles nor scholarly books . A source found in Google Scholar might instead be a conference presentation, a thesis, a dissertation, a magazine article, or a student essay.

Many of the journal articles you encounter in Google Scholar are not from history journals but come from journals in other disciplines (e.g.,  anthropology, archaeology, political science, psychology). 

Many of the books you encounter in Google Scholar will not be scholarly and some of the scholarly books you find may not be from the field of history.

Peer-reviewed history journal?

Click on the  Google Scholar  "Cite"  option under the record for your potential secondary source.  The journal name is found directly in front of the volume, issue, and page numbers. The journal name should be in italics.
  

To be sure you have a history journal article check the journal name against the History Journal Lists

In this case Canadian Review of American Studies is listed in the America: History & Life list, the Historical Abstracts list and the SJR list. 

Scholarly book?

Identifying a scholarly history books among the many results in Google Scholar can be difficult. If a portion of the book can be reviewed via Google Books check to see if there are footnotes (a sign that it is scholarly). To determine if the work is from the field of history try searching for the title in WorldCat. Check to see if the Subjects for the book record in WorldCat include "History" or a history-related synonym.

Then check OneSearch to see if UNI Rod Library owns a copy of this book. If not, request the book through Interlibrary Loan.