Activities
Interlibrary Loan
Use Interlibrary Loan to request a PDF of an article that isn't available at Lehigh or a scanned PDF of a print article that Lehigh owns. You will get an email when the article is ready for download.
What is a secondary source?
Secondary sources analyze, describe, discuss, or summarize primary sources. In general, a secondary source is one or more steps removed from the event, time period, or person being discussed, and are written after the fact with the benefit of hindsight. Secondary sources can include:
- Biographies
- Reference sources like dictionaries or encyclopedias
- Literature reviews
- Works of criticism or interpretation as in many scholarly articles
Search Techniques
1. Once you know your research interest, formulate it into a question and use the most important parts to generate keywords. Here, "Star Wars" and "myth" are the key parts of the topic, so those will be the keywords.
2. You can then use Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) to better refine your search.
Find Books
Watch the video below to learn more about searching in ASA: the online library catalog.
Historical Dictionary of The 1960s by
Few eras in U.S. history have begun with more optimistic promise and ended in more pessimistic despair than the 1960s. When JFK became president in 1960, the U.S. was the hope of the world. Ten years later American power abroad seemed wasted in the jungles of Indochina, and critics at home cast doubt on whether the U.S. was really the land of the free and the home of the brave. This book takes an encyclopedic look at the decade--at the individuals who shaped the era, the civil rights movement, the antiwar movement, the women's movement, and the youth rebellion. It covers the political, military, social, cultural, religious, economic, and diplomatic topics that made the 1960s a unique decade in U.S. history.
Call Number: ebookPublication Date: 1999
Search for Articles
Characteristics:
- Cover numerous topics
- May contain multiple types of sources (e.g. popular, trade, scholarly)
- Audience = educated readership
Examples:
- Academic Search Ultimate This link opens in a new windowIndexes, abstracts and provides selective full-text for a broad spectrum of magazines, journals and newspapers.
- Humanities & Social Sciences Index Retrospective This link opens in a new windowIndexes important scholarly journals for the entire range of the humanities and social sciences topics published throughout the 20th century in North America and Europe.
- JSTOR: The Scholarly Journal Archive This link opens in a new windowFull text of scholarly journals, beginning with the very first issue of each title. Primarily humanities and social sciences titles.
- Project MUSE: Scholarly Journals Online This link opens in a new windowOffers over 250 journal titles from 40 scholarly publishers.
- Social Science Premium Collection This link opens in a new windowSocial sciences database that offers international coverage of subject areas including Political Science, Public Policy, Sociology, Education, Psychology, Economics, Linguistics, and Criminal Justice
View the video below for tips on searching for articles.
Characteristics:
- Pertain to a particular discipline
- Often contain scholarly sources, known as peer-reviewed articles
- Articles are written and reviewed by experts in the field
- Academic audience
- Showcase original research
Examples:
- America: History and Life with Full Text This link opens in a new windowHistorical research about the United States and Canada from prehistory to the present.
Characteristics:
- Written by columnists
- Audience = general public
- Full of images
Examples:
- Sports Illustrated
- Vogue
Characteristics:
- Written by columnists, journalists, and/or reporters
- Coverage = current events
- Articles written at 8th grade reading level
Examples:
- Morning Call This link opens in a new windowCoverage from 1984 through today, including full-text, web-only content and full-color image edition.