What is a secondary source?
A secondary source is a scholarly discussion based on primary sources. Typically, a secondary source contains original research.
Why should I use secondary sources?
Secondary sources are useful for in-depth analysis of your topic and for learning about scholarly perspectives on your topic. You can use a secondary source as a conversation partner about a topic or you can take the methodology from a secondary source an apply it to a new research question.
What are some examples of secondary sources?
Secondary sources include articles, blogs, books (often called monographs), lectures, podcasts, and scientific reports. Any kind of scholarly literature can be a secondary source.
Pro tip: Although the distinction between primary sources and secondary sources is useful, it is not absolute. A secondary source may become a primary source depending on the researcher's perspective. Consider a textbook on American history from the 1990's. If a researcher uses the textbook for a scholarly perspective on the civil rights movement, then it is a secondary source. However, if the researcher uses the textbook to as evidence of curriculum in the 1990's, then it is a primary source.
Databases are specialized collections of citations and full-text links to articles in specific subject areas. Using a database can help you limit your search more easily to a specific subject and will also give you citations to works that we don't have in the Brown Library, which you can then request from Interlibrary Loan by using the Findit! link.
Also see the Reference Works page for encyclopedias and dictionaries.

Montezuma Well. Sinagua culture, Arizona, ca. 1200. Photography by Karen Bouchard. Luna Collection.
For Classical texts and history, please also see:
1959-2014; subtitled A Critical and Analytical Bibliography of Greco-Latin Antiquity, L'Annee Philologique is an international, multi-lingual bibliography of all aspects of classical studies, including authors and texts, literature, archaeology, history, philosophy, and other disciplines. Includes over 375,000 citations from about 1,500 periodicals and hundreds of monographic volumes. Like the print edition, the online version of L'Annee Philologique is published approximately two years behind.

Ziggurat dedicated to the god Enlil with Parthian palace on top. Sumerian. Nippur, Iraq. Photograph by David Stanley via Creative Commons license.
See also References Works & Bibliographies Tab on this Guide.
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