HIST 101: Themes - China & America (Ren): Secondary Sources

Craft Your Keywords:

Any research process begins by figuring out how to search. But, where to begin? 

BRAINSTORM
     

Spend a few minutes thinking about what words could be used to describe the topic. Be as  specific as you can. 
For example, if you're researching Chinese immigration to the United States, try:
China, immigration, "United States"

EXPAND

For each of the words you listed, think of other words or phrases you could use that mean the same thing.

For example, what are some other ways to talk about immigration? Could you also search for terms like migration, emigration, assimila

USE EXPERT SEARCH TRICKS!

Use AND and OR to make your search more or less specific! This will give you more sources to choose from.

When you use AND, a database will look for resources that use all of the words you entered.
For example: China AND immigration AND "United States" will find sources including all 3 term (note the "quotation marks" which help us specify the exact phrase, "United States." 

Use OR between words that mean the same or similar things, or that you are equally interested in.
For example: by searching for (China OR Chinese) AND (immigration OR migration) AND "United States," you will find sources that talk about  immigration or migration between China and the United States, or of Chinese individuals to the United States. 

TRACE Research Leads:

Everything that you come across in the process of research - your search results, keywords in the database, the titles of articles that just weren't quite right -- is a clue to help you move forward. As you search, try to pay attention to what you can learn from your results -- is a particular search term not working well? Is there something missing from the results, that you could find by tweaking your search slightly? Do you notice any unfamiliar words, or words you hadn't thought of, that might be useful for your next search? 

This continues once you find and begin reading sources! No piece of research stands alone; each is part of a broader scholarly conversation in that topic/ field. These resources have clues that you can TRACE, if you know how to look! 

Terms– Check the abstract, subject terms and article for concepts and terms that you can use for your future searches.

Reported in– Is the journal where the article was printed relevant? Try searching for other articles from this journal.

Author– What else has the author(s) published on this topic? Search the databases for their other publications

Consulted by- Check Google Scholar to see which articles or books have cited your sources, and to find
more-recent research which builds on your original information.

Evidence- Check the references list (or bibliography) to see what previous research this resource is drawing on. From here, you may wish to consider: 

- Previous articles or books published on your topic
- Other authors who have published on your topic
- Journals where your topic is frequently discussed

Tools for TRACE-ing: 

Searching for Books - General Tips:

CrossSearch is the Libraries' multi-search "discovery" tool. CrossSearch searches a cross-section of journal articles, newspapers, CDs, images, and many other types of resources available through the libraries. It is also our main library catalog -- the tool you use to find books, journals, films, and other items physically located in the library, as well electronic versions of those items. 

To leave out individual articles and focus on things like books and films, you can use the Catalog Only limit in CrossSearch. 

Watch our video tutorial  to learn more about CrossSearch! 

If you're not a CrossSearch fan, you can also use the Library Catalog to find books. 

Try searching for books using a very basic keyword search. Books tend to be on broad topics, so the terms you search with should be broad, too! Once you've found a few books that look interesting to you, you can use clues from the books to help you find other books. For example.... 

• Call Numbers. Books on similar subjects are in similar areas of the library. For example, if you search for books on Chinese Americans, you would see pretty quickly that many books have call numbers starting in the E184 section. This means you can easily go to those sections of the library and look through the books in person! 
  
  
• Vocabulary. Check the records in the library catalog for vocabulary in the tables of contents, titles, descriptions or other information that you might use for future searches. 
   
• Subjects. Every book in our catalog is marked with at least 1 "tag" that tells you what the book is mostly about, and links together other books on that same topic. You can click on the tags to find a list of all other books using that tag. 

Finding Books in the Library: 

At Holy Cross, we organize our books using a system called Library of Congress Classification or LCC. LCC is based on the subject of the books. Each letter represents a specific subject. Each subject is broken down into more specific letter sections, each of which is further broken down into number ranges for specific topics. Most call numbers have additional  numbers and letters on the end of them, which are used to give each book a unique spot on the library shelves. 

In general:

• Reference Books are in the Main Reading Room. These books must stay in the library.
• Books whose numbers begin with letters A through G are on the Mezzanine level (1 floor down from the Main Reading Room).
• Books whose numbers begin with N or TR are in the Visual Arts Wing on the main level. 
• Books whose numbers begin with letters H through Z are mostly on the Ground (bottom) level.
• Books whose numbers begin with M are in the Music Library in Brooks Hall.
• Books whose numbers begin with Q, R, S or T are in the Science Library in Swords Hall.

Watch our video tutorial  or visit our Call Numbers guide to learn more about how call numbers work. 

Then, use the handout below to learn more about locating materials in Dinand Library.

Ebooks:

To search for ebooks located at Holy Cross, use CrossSearch.

Then, use the Resource Type limiter in the side navigation to focus your search on e-books. 

Accessing E-Books:

In most cases, your best option is to use the "Read Online" feature for our e-books. Most academic e-books do not work with devices that you might use to read personal e-books, such as a Kindle or Nook (believe me -- this frustrates librarians too!). There is software that you can download onto a PC or iPad, but this can be difficult to use, so if you have a stable internet connection, I recommend reading online. 

However, if you would like to download the software, or if you are having trouble accessing any particular e-book, please feel free to contact us (libref@holycross.edu) or see our e-books guide linked below: 

NOTE that most e-books do have limits on printing. Each publisher has different functionality and rules for downloading and printing ebooks. 

Books Beyond HC: 

Dinand Library can only so many books! Fortunately, the world of books is at your fingertips when you use Interlibrary Loan. 

Interlibrary Loan or ILL is a service that allows you to request materials owned by other libraries all over the US (and sometimes, the world!). 

To find out what books exist for us to request, we can use the WorldCat database. WorldCat is a "world catalog" - it combines the catalogs of libraries all over the world! And, it makes it very easy to request books with a few clicks. 

Watch our video tutorial  for more information and a complete walkthrough. 

Some things to keep in mind: 

• Depending on where a book is traveling from, it can take up to 1-2 weeks (though usually less) to arrive. Make sure to plan ahead!
   
• ILL books often have shorter checkout periods than books you borrow from HC Libraries. When your book arrives, it will come with a sticker indicating the due date.

 Instructions for Using Interlibrary Loan

Using Databases to Find Articles: 

Research Databases are tools designed to help you search the scholarly (and other) articles and resources available to you through the Holy Cross Libraries.  Article databases are like very long bibliographies of articles that might interest you -- some that are available physically at Holy Cross, some available online, and some that we have to borrow from other libraries. 

Types of Databases

There are two main kinds of research databases that you might encounter: 

1. General databases which have a little bit of everything; 
2. Databases for specific subjects or types of sources (ex - newspapers, historical sources, videos, etc.) 

In addition, you will probably use CrossSearch, the search box on the homepage of the Libraries' website. CrossSearch is a discovery tool which searches many (though not all) databases at once. CrossSearch is like a library version of Google -- it is a great place to get your search started and find many sources at once, but once you get started on your research, you will probably want to use a more specific tool. 

When you search a web tool like Google, you are searching every word of every page of every document, from beginning to end. There are no rules about what goes into Google, so you get a mix of everything.  And, Google can't always tell the difference between a page or article that is all about your topic, and a page or article that mentions your topic only once or twice. 

When you search in the library research tools, like the catalog or (most) research databases, you are actually just searching short "profiles" of the book, article, or other source that you are looking at, rather than the whole source. Because the profiles are very short, searching for entire sentences or phrases does not usually work well in library resources. But, if a source comes up because its profile mentions your topic, it's much more likely that the source will actually be on your topic. And while the research tools have many different types of sources in them, they're all published sources, so they've been checked for quality on at least a very basic level. 

Places to Search

These are sources that might be helpful for you to use: 

History Databases:

General Databases: