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Secondary Sources
You’ve picked your topic, you’ve generated a solid research question, and now you’re ready to find some sources. In this section, we’ll discuss some best practices for finding the best secondary sources for your project. Secondary sources can be found by using databases and search engines, or by simply taking a trip to the library. But first, let’s quickly review what we mean by the term secondary source. Secondary sources are sources that have been produced by another person—be it a researcher, scholar, journalist, historian, etc. Secondary sources often include commentary or analysis on the subject being discussed, often along with an analysis and discussion of data the researcher has collected or observations the researcher has made.
In Generating a Topic and in Aligning Question with Research Methods, we have talked about doing the initial research, which can include using general search engines, and even Wikipedia as strategies to find topics to explore. Here, we guide you through the next steps of more focused secondary research.
Types of Sources
First, check your assignment sheet. Before doing too much research, make sure you know what sources are required for the assignment and what type of sources your instructor is expecting. Some instructors may leave this up to you, but others may require the use of scholarly, peer-reviewed sources—like books and journal articles—or they may instead allow, or even require, popular sources—like newspapers, magazines, etc. Double-checking the assignment sheet will keep you efficient and on-task, and will help you avoid common research errors such as spending too much time researching the wrong sources, limiting your source pool, or failing to meet the specific requirements of the assignment.
Let’s take a minute to talk about two major types of sources: popular sources, as compared to scholarly, or peer-reviewed, academic, sources.
Popular v. Academic Sources
Video Recap: Is this a popular source or an academic source?
| Popular Sources | Academic/Scholarly Sources |
| Written by a journalist | Written by a researcher, often a professor |
| Published in a magazine, newspaper, blog, etc. | Published in a scholarly, peer-reviewed journal or book by a university press |
| Provides general information, starts with a hook, written for a non-specialized audience. | Uses jargon, comprehensive information, written for an audience who is also researching this topic. |
| Uses catchy headings and title. | Descriptive headings and title, often in the Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion form. |
| Gives credit to resources within the text through attributive tags or hyperlinks. | Gives detailed citations, including both parenthetical sources and a reference list |
| Uses general language. May use figurative language. | Uses specialized language or jargon. May use hedged wording. |
| Visuals will catch the readers eye. | Visuals may be detailed charts, graphs, etc. to show data |
Of course, finding sources isn’t always so black and white. Sometimes you might have good reasons to combine popular and academic sources. For example, you might start your paper with some statistics or a story about someone’s everyday experience with your topic that you found in a popular source. However, if you write a literature review section in your paper, you probably want to only use academic sources for that section. The point of a literature review is often to summarize the academic research on a topic, so you can see where the popular sources would not fit in this type of assignment or section of your paper. Thus, understanding your rhetorical situation—what is expected for your project—and understanding the rhetorical situation of sources you are using—whom they are written for and why—will be crucial for navigating this part of the Research Process.
Ball State Library Resources
As a Ball State Student, you have a multitude of more focused and reliable ways to research your topic. If you want popular, news-oriented sources, the library has a database called Nexis Uni. If you are looking for academic sources, there are a multitude of databases that focus on different topics.
Video Recap: The best place to start your search for secondary sources is on the Ball State University Libraries’ webpage.
Finding Books
To search for books, you will start by clicking on the “OneSearch/CardCat” link. If you already have a book title or author you want to search for then you can simply type them into the search bar. OneSearch will pull up everything – books, journal articles, newspaper articles, dissertations, magazine articles, etc. – by author you are searching for, so to limit your search to books you have to select ‘Books’ under the filter heading “Content Type.” This will bring up all of the books available in the Ball State Libraries by this author.
You will most likely be doing a general search, however, without a specific book or author in mind. To do this, you will want to use keywords to find various books on your topics. You can use the same use the same keywords you came up with while developing your topic or research question. Simply type the keyword or phrase into the search bar. Again, select ‘Books’ under the filter heading “Content Type” to find the books available through the Ball State Libraries – both physical books and ebooks. If your search is still relatively large you can narrow it using filters under “Discipline”, “Subject Terms”, “Genre”, “Date”, and so on. If you click on the title you can find more details about the book, including a description that can help you decide if this book follows your topic. If you find a book that you think will be beneficial to your research, you can scroll through similar books in the section at the bottom of the page titled “Virtual Browse.” The page also lists the subject terms associated with each book that you can use as keywords to continue your search.
Finding Articles
There are a few different ways to search for articles using the Ball State databases. One way is to use OneSearch. You would start the same way you did when searching for books, but under “Content Type” you would select ‘Journal Article’ instead of ‘Books’. You can also select ‘Scholarly & Peer-Review’ under the “Refine You Search” heading to limit your search to articles published in scholarly, peer-reviewed journals. Then you can refine your search using the same filters – Discipline, Subject Terms, Genre, Date, etc. – that you use when searching for books. OneSearch will show results from multiple databases and catalogs to which Ball State has access. This can be helpful in that it allows you to collect these results in one place; however, it can also be overwhelming in the number of articles that a search will produce. Remember, when searching through databases, especially large ones like OneSearch, the first result may not always be the best results for your particular assignment.
You can also search individual databases. To do this, you will select the ’Databases’ link under the “Find Articles” heading. From there you can search for databases alphabetically, by subject, or by type. If you’re not sure which databases to use you can start with the most used databases, which are listed on the right side of the page as “Popular Databases” – under “Ask a Librarian” and “New/Trial Databases”. These databases are also tagged with a blue “Popular” label, so if you choose to browse through the databases you will know which ones are used most frequently.
Like OneSearch, most databases will have filters that will allow you to narrow your search. Most will allow you to filter your search by date and content/source type, meaning you can choose to narrow your search to journal articles, newspaper articles, book chapters, etc. Others may have more in-depth filters that allow you to narrow your search by subject or field. Narrowing your search results will give you a smaller pool of articles to examine, which can help you find articles that best fit your project much faster; however, it could cause you to eliminate helpful articles before getting a chance to look at them. If you are having trouble finding articles on your topic, the first thing you should do is consider adjusting your search filters. You may have been searching too narrowly to find any articles.
Do you need a peer-reviewed article? Most databases have a button to check to make sure you only get peer-reviewed, academic articles.
Google/Search Engine
Although there are many great tools at Ball State, there are times when using Google is still effective. Sometimes you will want to use Google Scholar to limit your Googling to academic sources. There are also ways to limit your search to a particular webpage or type of file, whether you are using Google or Google Scholar.
See the chart below for strategies for making your Google searches as focused as possible. (click on each + for more information).
Tips: Saving Sources
It would be a good idea to bookmark the library page for future use. In the list on the left-hand-side of the page, you will click on the link titled “Research Tools.” Here you will find links to book catalogs, research databases, course materials, archival databases, digital media repositories, and more. In this section, we will mainly be looking at the links found under the headings “Find Books” and “Find Articles.”
However, don’t bookmark individual articles as links may change. Rather, download PDF or save the DOI number.
Evaluating Sources
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MULTIMODAL MINUTE:
When researching secondary sources, students often gravitate toward texts like articles and books, occasionally throwing in a website or two. There are, however, many multimodal secondary sources that are forgotten about while researching.
Videos, for instance, are a good source of information, particularly if you need popular sources. Having trouble finding sources for your topic? Try looking up a TED Talk on the subject. TED Talks are often given by experts, so there is a scholarly element to them, but they are created as brief, easily understandable presentations, geared for a popular audience. Consider how such a source fits into your project, and whether you cite the source directly, or use it to get to other things the expert has said. Use the same approach for other video sources, from YouTube to documentaries. Is your research question about a current event? See if you can find a recent news segment or interview.
Podcasts are another source that students often forget to search. Podcast topics can range from current events to pop culture to the simply random and bizarre. As with other sources, podcasts also range vary towards being more or less scholarly in approach and content.
Students are sometimes wary of these sources because they – like most things found on the Internet – can be made by anyone. However, when you evaluate these types of sources carefully in the context of your particular assignment, you may find important ideas that can contribute to your project.
Summary
Start by knowing what type of secondary sources you need: popular, academic or both. This will help you know where to search. The library is great for having all types of sources, and part of this course is learning how to use the Ball State library. However, once you find sources, you’ll need to evaluate them. The next section discusses how to tell if the source will work for your project and how to read critically for the information you need.
NEXT: Engaging in Critical Reading