This guide is no longer being updated. 

Secondary sources are materials written by historians, typically in the form of books or journal articles. Because historians write these works based on primary sources, pay attention to the bibliographies, endnotes, etc. in the secondary sources that you find. You'll often find primary sources for your own paper this way.

Discover searches many, although not all, of the library's resources, including many of our databases. The results include books, journal articles, reference sources and more. It covers all subject areas, which makes it very useful for inter-disciplinary topics. Keep in mind that it covers popular and scholarly sources.

Additionally, when searched from the box on the library's home page, which looks like this,

Discover functions as the site search for the library's web pages. Please note that when searched from the library's home page search box, you cannot use functions such as quotations to do a phrase search.

See this handout for tips on using Discover and this link for a video on using Discover.

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Once you start viewing the "Articles & More" results from a Discover search on the home page by clicking a button that looks like this

You get to a page where you can narrow search results by using the facets on the left side of the page.

This an example of what it looks like when you choose the "peer-reviewed" facet and are looking to see what is listed under the "journal title" facet for a search on martyrdom Christianity. Perhaps you will find a journal that your professor recommends. The facets allow you to dig deeper into the search results. See this script for this video tutorial (part 1, part 2) for more information on Discover.

- In depth guide to finding primary sources at OU.

- In depth guide to finding secondary sources at OU.

- Guide for Religious Studies

- Interlibrary Loan