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University Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

History 200D: Monarchy, From the Middle Ages to the Present

Library Guide for finding resources to complete assignments for History 200D

What are secondary sources?

Secondary sources are the published work of scholars specializing in the topic. There are a variety of secondary sources, but they usually include scholarly books (e.g. monographs), peer-reviewed journal articles, or essays in a thematic edited collection. This scholarship is analytical and interpretive. It often synthesizes the work of other historians and scholars, while introducing new or different analyses of primary sources.