Primary and Secondary Sources

primary or secondary?

"raw" sources

How "close" is a resource to an event, discovery, experiment, or act of creation?

Objectives

• understand the nature and importance of primary and secondary sources in relation to one another.
• Identify primary and secondary sources.

Primary Sources

Used in a number of disciplines to describe source material that is closest to the person, information, period, or idea being studied.

straight from the horse's mouth

• eyewitness accounts
• from the subject's time period
• written by a key expert who developed the subject area
• direct report of an experiment

speeches

diary entries

photos

Secondary Sources

Secondary sources cite, analyze, interpret, comment on, or build upon primary sources.

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news article

books

Disciplinary Context

original research

reviews

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primary or secondary?

1. Distance measured by time
2. My question as a researcher

Primary Review

• Close in proximity to a specific time, event, or moment of creation
• minimally processed or altered

Secondary Review

• made up of, based upon, in some way derived from a primary source
• more removed in time (as a measure of distance)
• Distance can transform a secondary source into a primary source