QLC120: Making of a Culture Icon

Secondary sources are sources that comment on a primary source.

If you're researching Beyoncé as a cultural icon, the following could all be primary sources:

• Beyoncé's music, lyrics, and performances
• Interviews with Beyoncé
• Beyoncé's music videos and photos

Secondary sources could include:

• Reviews of her music
• Journal articles discussing her impact or analyzing her work
• Interviews with other artists discussing Beyoncé

OneSearch

A great place to find a variety of materials is the Everett Library's OneSearch, which searches most of the books, journals, and media that we have access to.

OneSearch works like most other databases and library search tools by giving you options to build an advanced search and filter results based on different parameters, including publication date, material type, and discipline.

See our Search Tips guide for more info about how to use OneSearch effectively.

Google Scholar

Google Scholar is a freely accessible search engine provided by Google, specifically designed for scholarly literature. It's a valuable tool for researchers, students, and academics, offering a vast body of content across a variety of disciplines, including secondary sources like journal articles, books, book chapters, and theses/dissertaions.

To learn how to use this tool effectively, check out our Google Scholar guide.

The Open Web

Many students have been told that scholarly sources from the library are "good" and popular sources from the internet are "bad", but this is a misconception. There is plenty of high-quality content online, including articles, blogs, videos, podcasts, etc., and there is plenty of low-quality content available through the library.

To learn about a cultural icon, you will likely need to find sources that would be considered "popular" rather than "scholarly", such as album or film reviews, magazine articles, videos, podcasts, or other materials.

The ways of finding these types of information are as diverse as the types of information available, so we won't go into detail about how to use search engines or YouTube, but here are some general tips:

General Tips for Web Searching

• Use what you learned from doing background research to develop keywords and look for related topics
• Match your search strategy to the platform you're using
  • Google and other search engines can process both keyword searching and full sentences, so you can try different versions of a search query to get results
  • YouTube works best with keyword searches, so avoid using full questions as search queries.
  • Generative AI-powered tools (like ChatGPT, Gemini, or Bing) are designed to respond to specific questions or instructions.
    • However, these tools are generative AI, which means they are generating the content, not returning existing content.
    • You can use these tools to brainstorm ideas and keywords or get very basic background info, but they won't always provide the sources you'll need for research.
• Try multiple strategies using multiple platforms

With sources from open web, it's extremely important to evaluate them for credibility and relevance. Check out our guide to evaluating sources.