Books in Primo are assigned Library of Congress Subject Headings. In many ways, subject headings are a form of tagging, in that they represent the content of the material and provide ways for you to efficiently locate more materials that are conceptually related.
Library of Congress Subject Headings are also quite useful for discovering primary sources. The following subheadings usually are added to indicate that the material is a primary source: sources, personal narratives, correspondence, diaries, manuscripts, or notebooks. Once you've discovered the subject heading for secondary sources, try adding one of the primary source subheadings to see what you find. Here are some examples:
Secondary source subject heading: Latin letters, Medieval
Primary source subject heading: Latin letters, Medieval -- Correspondence
Secondary source subject heading: Women -- Europe -- History -- Middle Ages, 500-1500.
Primary source subject heading: Women -- Europe -- History -- Middle Ages, 500-1500 -- Sources.
Secondary source subject heading: Monasticism and religious orders -- History -- Middle Ages, 600-1500
Primary source subject heading: Monasticism and religious orders -- History -- Middle Ages, 600-1500 -- Sources
When you know the author of the texts you are seeking, simply do an author search in Puget Sound WorldCat. Note that for very common names, you may need to provide additional information:
Gregory, Saint, Bishop of Tours
There are several databases from which to choose when you are seeking scholarly work. Most databases for historians focus on a particular geographical and/or chronological period. Always make sure that you've selected the most appropriate database to search!
Historians produce scholarship in several different genres, including entries in specialized subject encyclopedias; edited and annotated volumes of primary sources; surveys or textbooks; articles published in scholarly journals; articles aimed at a general audience that are published in popular venues such as magazines or blogs; scholarly essays published as part of a digital humanities project; and monographs.
A scholarly monograph:
Primo is the best tool to use when searching for monographs. When you see a title that might be relevant to your research, be sure to click on the "item details" tab in the catalog record to find out more information about it. Typically the full catalog record will provide several clues to help you determine whether the title is a scholarly monograph written by a historian:
