Research on historical objects, including their social and political contexts, can be challenging, particularly when you have limited accompanying information to start with or when the object is relatively obscure and has not been widely discussed in academic literature.

Use this guide if you are working on a research project that is based around the analysis of a historical object and are looking for primary or secondary sources related to its historical, social, or political context.  It will suggest helpful questions to ask at each stage of the object-driven research process, recommending resources and search strategies along the way.

First steps: interrogating the object

When starting off researching a historical object, you will likely only have relatively limited information available. For example, this “Cantonese Opera Makeup Box” (pictured below) in the UBC Museum of Anthropology collections provides basic information about the item, including its country and culture of origin.

Key questions

Before beginning a search for information sources relating to this item, it is a good idea to start by considering what you already know about the object and what you want to learn.

One way to do this is to ask a series of questions about the item, including:

• Who made the object?
• When was the object made?
• Why was the object made?
• How was the object used?
• Who used the object?

If this information is not available in the accompanying description of the object, you may need to make educated guesses for some of these questions. In the case of the Cantonese Opera Makeup Box, there is a “More information” section of the page with some helpful additional details.

This page includes a brief description of the object’s “History of use,” a “Physical description” that includes details about its material construction and design, and an estimate for its “Date Made” details.

Planning your search

Unless your object is unique and famous, it may be difficult to find discussions of the specific object you have chosen for this assignment,  However, discussions of similar objects or related phenomenon will be useful in understanding your object.

For the example of the Cantonese Opera Makeup Box, this object’s name is quite generic in nature, so it can be difficult to search for discussions of this specific object.  Sources that describe this type of item (that is, from the same location, time period, and for the same use) will need to be used instead.

Some questions that can help steer your search for similar or related objects can be found below:

• What is your object made out of?
• How was it made? Was your object created by hand, or was it manufactured by machine?
• Does your object have a characteristic design or style?
• Is your object meant to be used for a specific purpose? Is it meant to be decorative?
• How does this object’s design relate to other objects from this time period?
• Does this object have any symbolic value? Does it include any representations?
• What characteristics of users can you infer based on the object and its description?

Getting background information

Depending on your level of familiarity, it can be helpful to refer to background reference sources, such as encyclopedias, to help familiarize you with key terms and concepts related to the historical object and its context.

For the example of the Cantonese Opera Makeup Box, it might be helpful to find background information about Cantonese Opera, or Chinese Opera more generally, and how makeup is used in this context.  You may want to consider how the box ended up in a BC museum, perhaps as an example of the phenomenon of opera troupes touring for the Cantonese diaspora.

One way to search reference sources through the SFU Library is to use some of the general encyclopedias listed on this page. A search for “Cantonese opera” the Oxford Reference Online database, for instance, returns a list of encyclopedia entries providing a helpful overview of the topic and period-specific terminology.

Clicking on one of the search results brings us to an encyclopedia entry related to our topic. At the top of the page, we can see the name of the encyclopedia that this entry originates from. On the left-hand side of the page, we can see related entries from the same encyclopedia. Reading through this entry gives us additional terminology that we can use in subsequent searches.

It can be useful to record key details and terms during this initial research stage so that they can be more easily used in later searches.

Finding secondary sources

In humanities research, secondary sources are works that interpret, describe, or evaluate primary sources. In addition, these works are typically created by individuals that are not personally connected to the time period or event from which the primary source originates. Some common types of secondary sources include journal articles, monographs, and textbooks.

Journal articles

Scholarly journal articles can be a great type of secondary source to use for your research.  You can use journal indexes to search for articles about people or topics. 

Some relevant databases to start your search for articles include:

Academic Search Premier
Multidisciplinary index to academic & popular journals with many full-text articles.

America: History and Life 
Literature on all aspects of U.S. and Canadian history, culture and current affairs from prehistory to present.

Arts & Humanities Citation Index 
A multidisciplinary index to the journal literature of the arts and humanities, including Archaeology, Art, and History.

Art Full Text:
Periodicals, journals, and reproduction of images covering fine, decorative and commercial art, folk art, photography, film, and architecture.

CBCA Complete
Comprehensive Canadian periodical collection for reference and current events. Publications include scholarly journal articles, trade publications, dissertations, books, newspapers and magazines.

Historical Abstracts 
Abstracts of journal articles, book reviews, dissertations on the history of the world outside, excluding Canada and the United States, since 1450. Access is limited to 6 users at a time. Users will be automatically logged out of the database after 12 minutes of inactivity.

JSTOR 
An archival collection of scholarly journals mainly in the arts, humanities and social sciences

Project MUSE Search 
Humanities and social sciences peer-reviewed academic journals and ebooks from university presses and scholarly societies world-wide.

Books

To find print or e-books related to your historical object, you can use the SFU Library catalogue. After doing a keyword search in the catalogue, select “Books” from the “Resource Type” filters. Please note that the SFU Library currently searches “Online Resources only” by default.

Because books tend to cover a wider range of information, it is important not to dismiss a book simply because its title does not include the specific term or concept you are looking for.

You can use a book’s table of contents or index to find sections or pages related to your object or its context. In some cases, a book’s table of contents will be included in the library catalogue record for the title.

You can also search for books by topic using library subject terms. If you’re not familiar with subject terms related to your topic, you can find them listed on the catalogue record for books you have already found on your topic. Clicking on these subject terms will find all the books that have a major focus on that topic.

For more search tips, you can refer to the SFU Library’s Catalogue Search Guide.

Finding primary sources

Depending on the needs of your research, you may need to find primary source materials related to the historical object you have chosen.

These primary sources might take the form of a similar object to the one that you have chosen, or it could include a newspaper article from the item’s historical time period describing the item or a related issue.

Similar or related objects

Depending on the nature of your chosen object, you may want to search for a similar or related type of object, which can be found in visual art databases. Using some of the guiding questions listed above, use the details you have gathered about your object or type of item to carry out your search.

ARTstor
The ARTstor Collection currently contains over one million images. The Collection documents artistic traditions across many times and cultures and embraces architecture, painting, sculpture, photography, decorative arts, and design as well as many other forms of visual culture.

Empire Online
Manuscripts, print, and visual primary sources on colonial history, politics, culture and society around the world from 1492-1969.

Early Encounters in North America 
Prints, drawings, paintings, maps, bibliographies, photographs, letters, diaries, memoirs, and accounts of early encounters in North America from 1534 to 1850. It includes perspectives of explorers, Indigenous peoples, missionaries, officials, slaves, soldiers, and traders.

Historical newspapers and documents

Newspaper articles or other documents written during the time period that the chosen object or item type was created or used can be another useful type of primary source to consider. Below are a list of databases containing these types of primary sources.

Historical Newspapers
Searches full page and article images from the Globe and Mail, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post from the mid to late 19th century with embargoes on the most recent 3-8 years of newspaper issues.
Detailed search guide

Gale NewsVault 
Historical full page and article images from the Globe and Mail, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post from the mid to late 19th century.
Coverage of specific newspapers
Detailed search options

Early Canadiana Online
Books, government documents, and magazines documenting Canadian history from the 16th to 20th centuries.

British Columbia Historical Newspapers
Digitized versions of historical community newspapers from around the province of British Columbia from 1865 to 1994.

Electronic Enlightenment
Over 77,000 letters between over 10,000 people in Europe, the Americas and Asia from the early 17th to mid 19th century, with scholarly annotations.

Additional resources

Primary Sources for the Humanities
This guide includes primary sources (diaries, letters, maps, prints, pamphlets, handbills, manuscripts) grouped by geography. 

See Primary sources: SFU Library Databases for a list of primary sources in alphabetical order.