Travelers' Narratives: Home

 A secondary source addresses or analyzes events, people, works, or topics after the fact, unlike primary sources which provide firsthand accounts. Examples include:

• Encyclopedias
• Books
• Journal articles

For this assignment you will be searching mainly for encyclopedia articles in Gale eBooks (aka Gale Virtual Reference Library) and other specialized encyclopedias, full length books, or chapters and sections in books.

You will find it helpful to consult a specialized encyclopedia to locate some basic information about your traveler before looking for a more detailed secondary source. It will help you to ascertain when your traveler lived, where your traveler came from, and to identify alternate spellings of his name.  Information about the travelers can be found in the Gale Virtual Reference Library, Jewish Encyclopedia: Benjamin of Tudela and, for Ma Huan, Encyclopedia of Islam.

Some of you will find whole books on your traveler, but some of you will not. Remember, you can look for sections and chapters in books too. This is where knowing a little about your traveler will help. For example, you can look for general histories of the country, or part of the world that your traveler was from and check the indexes for his name.