Dictionaries, encyclopedias and handbooks
Academic subject specific resources offer definitions, as well as short introductions to key topics, concepts, methods and areas of study in the discipline.
Entries will often include a bibliography so you can learn about key authors in the subject area and get references to articles and books on the topic.
Explore this collection in Omni.
What is a primary source?
Primary sources are firsthand accounts of events and experiences. Primary sources are created by participants or observers of the events in history. They are the original records or objects from that time period. What constitutes a primary source will depend on your topic. Primary sources include diaries, letters, meeting minutes, interviews, speeches, newspapers, birth/death/marriage certificates, posters, contracts video/audio from the event and government documents.
Primary sources are often distinguished from secondary sources. Secondary sources are written by historians include an analysis and interpretation of history on the basis of primary sources.
Finding primary sources in the archives
Archives provide access to unpublished records. To learn more about archives and how to search them consult the Laurentian University Archives.
Finding primary sources in the library
Primary sources are sometimes pulled together in published book collections. You can locate these publications searching Omni, the library’s main search tool. Consult the Omni help guide for general tips on using Omni.
To locate primary sources, use keywords in your search that describe the primary source type you are interested in, such as:
| diaries | journals | notebooks |
| letters | correspondences | speeches |
| source book | sources | interviews |
| songs | proclamations | trials |
| pamphlets | memoirs | documentary |
History : main resources
Covers literature on the history and culture of the U.S. and Canada from prehistory to the present. The index includes 1,700 journals from as far back as 1910. Access is limited to 6 concurrent users.
A bibliographic database covering all aspects of Indigenous peoples in North American culture, history, and life. This resource covers a wide range of topics including archaeology, multicultural relations, gaming, governance, legend, and literacy. BIPNA contains more than 141,000 citations for books, essays, journal articles, and government documents of the United States and Canada. Dates of coverage for included content range from the sixteenth century to the present.
The CPI provides access to articles from a comprehensive list of Canadian and international journals, magazines, selected sections of the Globe and Mail, Canadian biographies and other reference content from Gale™, all with a Canadian focus. Indexing from 1980 to present; Full-text articles from 1983 to present.
Historical Abstracts covers the history of the world (excluding the United States and Canada) from 1450 to the present, including world history, military history, women's history, history of education, and more. This authoritative database provides indexing of more than 2,300 academic historical journals in over 40 languages back to 1955. Access is limited to 6 concurrent users.
Covers secondary sources pertaining to the Middle Ages and Renaissance (400-1700). Citations for books and journal material (articles, reviews, review articles, bibliographies, catalogues, abstracts and discographies) are included, as are citations for dissertation abstracts and essays in books (including entries in conference proceedings, festschriften, encyclopedias and exhibition catalogues).
Open-access index of recent publications in Canadian labour studies including books, book chapters, journal articles, reviews, commissioned reports, and theses. Indexes comprehensively the journals Labour/Le Travail, Relations industrielles/Industrial Relations and Just Labour: A Canadian Journal of Work and Society. The Index is produced by Desmond Maley and Dan Scott, J.-N. Desmarais Library, Laurentian University.
ViVa is a current bibliography of articles about women's and gender history. Articles published in English, French, German and Dutch are selected from more than eighty European, American and Indian Journals.
History : additional resources
European French-language database with over 500 full-text journals and 20,000 books, primarily in the humanities and social sciences.
Multidisciplinary platform containing many databases in different disciplines, such as the humanities, social sciences, education, arts and natural sciences.
Canadian database with over 150 full-text journals in the humanities and social sciences. Also includes theses and research reports from Quebec university institutions.
Free access multilingual social sciences and humanities databases. English and French searching options available.
Google Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature... across many disciplines and sources: articles, theses, books, abstracts and court opinions, from academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, universities and other web sites.
Humanities & Social Sciences Index Retrospective™: 1907-1984 offers a broad range of subject coverage in the humanities and social sciences with high-quality indexing of more than 1,300,000 articles in nearly 1,100 periodicals, dating as far back as 1907, as well as citations of over 240,000 book reviews.
JSTOR includes the archives of over one thousand leading academic journals across the humanities, social sciences, and sciences, as well as select monographs and other materials valuable for academic work. The entire corpus is full-text searchable, offers search term highlighting, includes high-quality images, and is interlinked by millions of citations and references. Note: Normally the journals in JSTOR are five years from current; further, all JSTOR journals are available through the "Get it @ Laurentian" link from other databases. JSTOR should NOT be used as at the first resort.
Covers literature from all over the world--Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, and North and South America. Folklore is represented by folk literature, music, art, rituals, and belief systems. Linguistics and language materials range from history and theory of linguistics, comparative linguistics, semantics, stylistics, and syntax to translation. Other topics include literary theory and criticism, dramatic arts (film, radio, television, theater), and history of printing and publishing. Since 1926.
Provides indexing of over three million articles from more than 550 leading magazines, including full coverage of the original print volumes of Readers’ Guide to Periodical Literature. This important resource offers a wide range of researchers access to information about history, culture and seminal developments across nearly a century" - publisher's website.
A comprehensive research platform that brings together many different types of content including journal articles, patents, websites, conference proceedings, and open access material. Web of Science is located within Web of Knowledge. This resource offers access to journal articles in the sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities. Web of Science contains over 100 years of research, fully indexed and cross-searchable.