SUBJECT LIBGUIDE: EVALUATING RESOURCES: Know Your Resource: Primary, Secondary & Tertiary Sources

DEFINITION 

• Documents, images or artifacts that provide firsthand testimony or direct evidence concerning an historical topic under research investigation.
• Original documents created or experienced concurrently with the event being researched.
• Enable researchers to get as close as possible to what actually happened during an historical event or time period.

CHARACTERISTICS

• First hand observations, contemporary accounts of the event. Viewpoint of the time.
• First-hand observation, analysis or accounts with the events described.
• Document events, people, viewpoints of the time.
• Represent one person's perspective; frequently will be used with secondary/tertiary sources to explore events, eras, etc.
• Be aware of bias of the observer/analyzer that creates the primary source, and also cultural biases of the era in which the primary source was created.
• Reproductions of primary sources remain primary for many research purposes.

EXAMPLES

• Interviews 
• News footage 
• Data sets,
• Original research 
• Speeches 
• Diaries 
• Letters 
• Creative works 
• Photographs
• Archives and manuscript material
• Photographs, audio recordings, video recordings, films
• Journals, letters and diaries
• Speeches
• Scrapbooks
• Published books, newspapers and magazine clippings published at the time
• Government publications
• Oral histories
• Records of organizations
• Autobiographies and memoirs
• Printed ephemera
• Artifacts, e.g. clothing, costumes, furniture
• Research data, e.g. public opinion polls

DEFINITION 

• Works that interprets or analyzes an historical event or period after the event has occurred and, generally speaking, with the use of primary sources.
• Note: The same document, or other piece of evidence, may be a primary source in one investigation and secondary in another.

CHARACTERISTICS

• Works that analyze, assess or interpret an historical event, era, etc., generally using primary sources.
• Offers a review or a critique
• Includes books, journal articles, speeches, reviews, research reports, and more.
• Written after the events that are being researched.
• Note: However, if an individual writes about events that he or she experienced first hand many years after that event occurred, it is still considered a primary source.

EXAMPLES

• Research studies 
• Literary criticism 
• Book reviews 
• Biographies 
• Textbooks

DEFINITION 

Sources that identify, locate, and synthesize primary AND secondary sources.

CHARACTERISTICS

• Reference works, collections of lists of primary and secondary sources, finding tools for sources.
• Identify and locate primary and secondary sources.
• These include bibliographies, indexes, abstracts, encyclopedias, and other reference resources; available in multiple formats, i.e. some are online, others only in print.
• Note: Be Aware that these categories, i.e. secondary and tertiary, are not mutually exclusive. A single item may be primary or secondary (or even tertiary) depending on your research topic and the use you make of that item.

EXAMPLES

• Encyclopedias 
• Bibliographies 
• Dictionaries 
• Manuals 
• Textbooks,
• Fact books 
• Indexes
• Abstracts
• Other reference resources; available in multiple formats, i.e. some are online, others only in print.