Secondary Historical Sources

OneSearch allows search operators "AND" and "OR"

"OR" will return articles containing either search term ... e.g. either Great Britain or British

"AND" will only return articles containing both search terms. The search British AND Empire will only return articles containing both of these words.

The asterisk (allows the search to find articles containing various forms of a word (multiple endings) ... e.g. coloni* searches for Colonial, Colinisation, Colinization, Colinialism, etc. 

OneSearch allows focused searching by Title or Subject 

OneSearch can be limited to searching for words in the title of a book, book chapter, or article. In Advanced Search change the option "Any Field" to "Title".

A particularly powerful technique is to search in the "Subject" field.

To locate very specific (and powerful) subject terms in OneSearch - begin with a basic search on your topic - then inspect the records of potentially useful books or articles. In the records look under "Subjects" to find specific subject heading options that can than either be clicked on or copy-and-pasted into a new "Subject" search.

Peer-Reviewed (Refereed) Journal Articles

The results from OneSearch can be limited to peer-reviewed (refereed) journal articles by selecting this option on the right-hand side of the results page.

Caution! Not all peer-reviewed journals are history journals. To be sure check the names of journals against the lists found on the History Journal Lists page.

Books and Book Chapters

The results from OneSearch can be limited to either books (print or online) or book chapters (online) by clicking on these options under “Source Type” found on the righthand side of the results page.

Caution! While most of the books in Rod Library will be scholarly – be sure the book includes the usual indicators of research such as footnotes. 

Finding recent secondary sources.
 

To limit results from OneSearch to the most recent secondary sources head to the righthand side of the results page and either:

 

1. Change the “Sort by” option to “Date-newest” or
   
   
   
          
2. Set the "Publication Date" to 1985 to 2022, check the box, click on "Refine" and then click on "Apply Filters"

Problems with OneSearch:

1. OneSearch does not search all history journals
   (other option - Google Scholar)
    
2. Though OneSearch results can be limited to peer-reviewed journals - these journals may not all be History journals (they might be journals from other fields such as Political Science or Communication Science). To check whether the journal in question is a high quality History journal check the journal name against the titles found in the History Journal Lists.
    
3. OneSearch finds only a fraction of history books.
   (other options - WorldCat plus Interlibrary Loan)