Use the Gale eBooks database (link is below) to find short overview articles on topics related to your research. This is not an exhaustive list of key terms.
Some recommended search terms:
Why search here? Use this database for preliminary reading as you start your research. You'll learn about your topic by reading authoritative topic overviews on a wide variety of subjects.
What's included: Gale eBooks is comprised of subject, specialized encyclopedias with articles written by scholars and experts.
Because primary sources are the documents or artifacts closest to the topic of investigation, they're a great way to gain insight into and an understanding of your event or topic. Often they are created during the time period that is being studied but they can also be produced later by eyewitnesses or participants.
You may find primary sources in their original format (usually in an archive) or reproduced in a variety of ways. For example, in books, in digital format on the Web, on microfilm, digital, etc.
Examples of Primary Sources are:
To find primary sources, simply add these words to the end of your search for resources on any topic:
For more information on finding primary sources, see our research guide, Find Primary Sources.
The MJC Library has several databases that are great to use when you need to find primary sources.
Secondary information is made up of accounts written after the fact with the benefit of hindsight. Therefore, secondary information interprets and evaluates primary information.
Because secondary sources are written with the benefit of hindsight and interpretation, they are useful at helping you understand your topic and seeing what scholars and other experts have to say about it.
Use the MJC Library Catalog, library databases, and the Web to find secondary sources.
To get started on local history projects check out our Local History & Information research guide by clicking on the picture below or right here.
Contested Eden: California Before the Gold Rush
Celebrating the 150th birthday of the state of California offers the opportunity to reexamine the founding of modern California, from the earliest days through the Gold Rush and up to 1870. In this four-volume series, published in association with the California Historical Society, leading scholars offer a contemporary perspective on such issues as the evolution of a distinctive California culture, the interaction between people and the natural environment, the ways in which California's development affected the United States and the world, and the legacy of cultural and ethnic diversity in the state. California before the Gold Rush, the first California Sesquicentennial volume, combines topics of interest to scholars and general readers alike. The essays investigate traditional historical subjects and also explore such areas as environmental science, women's history, and Indian history. Authored by distinguished scholars in their respective fields, each essay contains excellent summary bibliographies of leading works on pertinent topics. This volume also features an extraordinary full-color photographic essay on the artistic record of the conquest of California by Europeans, as well as over seventy black-and-white photographs, some never before published.
Murder State: California's Native American Genocide, 1846-1873
In the second half of the nineteenth century, the Euro-American citizenry of California carried out mass genocide against the Native population of their state, using the processes and mechanisms of democracy to secure land and resources for themselves and their private interests. The murder, rape, and enslavement of thousands of Native people were legitimized by notions of democracy--in this case mob rule--through a discreetly organized and brutally effective series of petitions, referenda, town hall meetings, and votes at every level of California government. Murder State is a comprehensive examination of these events and their early legacy. Preconceptions about Native Americans as shaped by the popular press and by immigrants' experiences on the Overland Trail to California were used to further justify the elimination of Native people in the newcomers' quest for land. The allegedly "violent nature" of Native people was often merely their reaction to the atrocities committed against them as they were driven from their ancestral lands and alienated from their traditional resources. In this narrative history employing numerous primary sources and the latest interdisciplinary scholarship on genocide, Brendan C. Lindsay examines the darker side of California history, one rarely studied in detail, and the motives of both Native Americans and Euro-Americans at the time. Murder State calls attention to the misuse of democracy to justify and commit genocide. Purchase the audio edition.
Gold: The California Story
The discovery of gold in 1848 catapulted California into statehood and triggered environmental, social, political, and economic events whose repercussions are still felt today. Mary Hill combines her scientific training with a flair for storytelling to present the history of gold in California from the distant geological past through the wild days of the Gold Rush to the present. The early days of gold fever drew would-be miners from around the world, many enduring great hardships to reach California. Once here, they found mining to be backbreaking work and devised machines to help recover gold. These machines pawed gravel from river bottoms and tore apart mountainsides, wreaking environmental havoc that silted rivers, ruined farmlands, and provoked the world's first environmental conflict settled in the courts. Native Americans were nearly wiped out by invading miners or their diseases, and many Spanish-speaking settlers--Californios--were pushed aside. Hill writes of gold's uses in today's world for everything from coins to coffins, gourmet foods to spacecraft. Her comprehensive overview of gold's impact on California includes illustrated explanations of geology and mining in nontechnical language as well as numerous illustrations, maps, and photographs.
Telling Identities
The author offers the first historical and literary analysis of thirty 1870's testimonios from the original Spanish-speaking settlers of Alta California. Telling Identities scrutinizes the role of gender, class, race, language, and ethnicity in group identity formation as it looks into history to help articulate the cultural politics of contemporary Chicano and Latino culture in the United States.
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