The Assignment
For Essay no. 3, students will design their own research project analyzing primary evidence that addresses some research question related to the professional-managerial class. The essay will draw on at least five secondary sources, at least three of which have been located by you.
Contact
Finding Secondary Sources
HOLLIS has two main parts. There’s the traditional Library Catalog of Harvard's books, journals, films, sound recordings, maps, and so on. Then there’s a huge additional database of articles, reviews, etc. which come from various sources outside Harvard. Many of these are available in full text online through Harvard's subscriptions.
You can search the Library Catalog separately, or -- especially if you want to see articles -- search for "Catalog and Articles." These choices appear as soon as you start to type a search.
Turn to the next page for tips on using HOLLIS effectively.
Use the Selected Databases for faster access to more relevant search results. To find even more, go to HOLLIS Databases.
► But . . . won't I get all the articles I need with HOLLIS?
HOLLIS will give you a lot of articles, but specialized databases can give you more focused results from specific fields of study.
Most of the records in HOLLIS have linked Subject Headings that you can use as a springboard for finding similar items. In the Library Catalog, most of those headings have been specially crafted by the Library of Congress. For example, here are the subject headings for Lamont's book Money, Morals, and Manners:
Go to the Subject Heading Tips to see how you can use a main heading like Executives to search for specific treatments of this topic.
Sample prompt: "I need a peer-reviewed article on the relative levels of psychological stress among members of the professional-managerial class and the general population in the United States."
OpenAI's GPT 4.1 gave me mixed results. One peer-reviewed article from 2006 seemed like exactly what I had asked for; however, in order to get the full text, I had to search for the article in HOLLIS. (That HOLLIS search also brought up a few other valuable articles on the topic.) When I asked for more articles on the topic, several of the results were off-topic, and only one of the better results was directly available in full text without searching for it in HOLLIS.
Conclusion: An AI assistant may find worthwhile sources, but direct access to full text is rare, and finding the most recent research is not guaranteed unless you build that requirement into your prompt.
The Syllabus for your course has an excellent Selected Bibliography on the PMC that can get you started with secondary sources. Look up the titles in HOLLIS and follow their subject headings; scan their bibliographies and citations to find more sources.
Almost every secondary source you find will cite other sources. When you have found a good secondary article, book, or book chapter, don't forget to check its notes and the works that it lists in a "Bibliography" or "References" section.
Here's a sample of the References in Musa al-Gharbi's We Have Never Been Woke:
Types of Primary Evidence . . .
Archival records • Interviews • Surveys • Statistics (numerical data) • Official documents • Websites • Articles in the media • Public statements • Social media • YouTube videos • Representations of professionals in novels, films, TV shows, or podcasts
. . . and Ways to Find It
One good place to find primary sources is in the references and bibliographies of secondary ones (those that analyze or comment on primary sources). Your course texts all cite primary evidence, including statistics, throughout their pages. Here's an example from We Have Never Been Woke (p. 281), using material from an interview and statistical data:
In the HOLLIS Basic or Advanced Search, combine your search topic with words such as:
- Interviews
- Case Studies
- Research Studies
- Qualitative OR Quantitative
- Patterns
- Ethnog* (the asterisk is a "wildcard character" that lets you search for ethnography, ethnographic, ethnographer, etc.)
In the Advanced Search, you can express your topic in general Keywords, or as a Subject using terms created by the Library of Congress (see more about this here).
Sample searches in HOLLIS Advanced Search:
- Keywords "corporate executives" and Keywords interviews OR statistics
- KW professionals and KW museums KW "case studies"
- SUBJECT executives and SUBJECT "personal narratives"
Statista
A statistics portal that integrates thousands of diverse topics of data and facts from a wide range of sources onto a single platform. Sources of information include market research, trade publications, scientific journals, and government databases.
Sample reports: Millionaires in the United States / Americans' Opinions on Billionaires in the U.S.
For other statistical sources, see Essential Resources for Locating and Using Numeric Data.