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Information For Students

I have to write a research paper using primary sources. where do i start.

• What is the difference between Primary and Secondary sources?
• How do I cite primary source materials?
• What are Special Collections and Archives?
• Student Organizations

Primary sources are created by individuals who participated in or witnessed an event and recorded that event during or immediately after the event.

Explanation:

A student activist during the war writing about protest activities has created a memoir. This would be a primary source because the information is based on her own involvement in the events she describes. Similarly, an antiwar speech is a primary source. So is the arrest record of student protesters. A newspaper editorial or article, reporting on a student demonstration is also a primary source.

Deeds, wills, court documents, military records, tax records, census records, diaries, journals, letters, account books, advertisements, newspapers, photographs, and maps are primary sources.

Secondary sources are created by someone who was either not present when the event occurred or removed from it in time. We use secondary sources for overview information, and to help familiarize ourselves with a topic and compare that topic with other events in history.

History books, encyclopedias, historical dictionaries, and academic articles are secondary sources.

If you've never written a research paper using primary sources, it is important to understand that the process is different from using only secondary sources. Many students discover that finding and gaining access to primary source documents can be difficult. The Library website has a valuable guide to locating primary source documents. Follow the link below to be redirected to that guide:

https://libguides.furman.edu/resources/primary-sources

• Students are encouraged to seek help from the Special Collections Librarian or Research Librarians to aid in their research projects. Librarians will be able to aid students in a variety of ways including helping to locate primary source materials.

After locating appropriate primary sources, it is necessary for students to analyze and interpret them. To many students, this task can seem arduous, if not overwhelming. There are many resources available in the library as well as online, which are helpful. The National Archives website has very useful analysis worksheets that can help students to determine the significance of primary source documents. Links to PDF files of these worksheets are listed below:

Written Document | Artifact | Cartoon | Map | Motion Picture | Photograph | Poster | Sound Recording

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• Next: What is the difference between Primary and Secondary sources? >>
• Last Updated: May 14, 2024 2:53 PM
• URL: https://libguides.furman.edu/special-collections/for-students

Primary Sources Guide

Understanding research sources.

• African American Studies
• Latin American & Latina/o Studies
• Native American & Indigenous Studies
• Evaluating Primary Sources
• Citing Primary Sources

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• What are Primary Sources?
• What are Secondary Sources?
• What are Tertiary Sources?

A primary source is a first-hand account from a person or organization who:

• Created an original work
• Participated in new scientific discoveries
• Witnessed an event

Some examples of primary sources include:

• Art and artifacts
• Autobiographies, diaries, and memoirs
• Interviews and oral histories
• Novels and poetry
• Photographs
• Data and surveys

Why are primary sources useful?  Primary sources are useful to:

• Observe and analyze an event from an eyewitness perspective
• Develop your own opinions and explanations
• Learn if you agree or disagree with the authors of secondary/tertiary sources and their conclusions

A secondary source has the following qualities:

• It comments on or analyzes something
• It often summarizes or interprets primary sources
• It's usually written by someone who was not directly involved or an eyewitness

Some examples of secondary sources include:

• Analysis or criticism, such as literary criticism
• Biographies
• Essays and reviews

Why are secondary sources useful? Secondary sources are useful because they:

• Help you consider diverse viewpoints about a topic
• Organize and outline information in an approachable way
• Offer information and analysis from experts

Remember, secondary sources are often based on studying and analyzing primary sources . Another way to think about it? Your research paper is a secondary source because you're analyzing and interpreting other sources.

A tertiary source has the following qualities:

• It lists and compiles information without additional analysis
• It repackages important ideas and information from other primary and secondary sources

Some examples of tertiary sources include:

• Directories of local, state, and national organizations
• Encyclopedias and dictionaries
• Guidebooks and handbooks

Why are tertiary sources useful? Tertiary sources are useful because they help you:

• Gather background information about a topic or concept
• Find a variety of information in one source
• Provide information in a concise and compact way

Examples of Primary Sources vs. Other Sources

• Communications

One area of study at Central Piedmont where primary sources are often used is History . Here are some examples:

• Primary Source = Autobiography :  Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave by Frederick Douglass
• Secondary Source = Biography :  Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom by David W. Blight

Another area of study at Central Piedmont where primary sources often come into play is English . Here are some examples:

• Primary Source = Novel :  Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez
• Secondary Source = Literary Criticism :  Gabriel García Márquez in Retrospect: A Collection Book , edited by Gene H. Bell-Villada

One other area of study at Central Piedmont where primary sources often come into play is Communications . Here are some examples:

• Primary Sources = Memoir :  Deaf Utopia: A Memoir--And a Love Letter to a Way of Life  by Nyle DiMarco
• Secondary Sources = Journal Article : "Curriculum and Instruction for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Students: Evidence from the Past—Considerations for the Future" (2023) by Maria C. Hartman, Elaine R. Smolen, and Brynne Powell
• Tertiary Sources = Reference Book :  American Sign Language: A Step-by-Step Guide to Signing by Suzie Chafin

Credit : Austin Community College's Primary Sources guide served as the inspiration and model for this LibGuide.

Additional Help

• Next: Finding Primary Sources >>
• Last Updated: Jun 26, 2024 8:48 AM
• URL: https://researchguides.cpcc.edu/primary-sources

• Primary Sources
• Definitions
• Documents - Printed & Published
• Objects and Artifacts
• Sound Recordings
• Visual Materials
• Digitized Sources
• Locating Sources
• Sources By Subject
• Evaluating Sources
• Documenting Sources / Copyright
• Research Tips
• Using Archives This link opens in a new window

Primary Sources Definition

What are primary sources .

Primary sources enable the researcher to get as close as possible to the truth of what actually happened during an historical event or time period. Primary source is a term used in a number of disciplines to describe source material that is closest to the person, information, period, or idea being studied.  A primary source (also called original source ) is a document, recording, artifact, or other source of information that was created at the time under study, usually by a source with direct personal knowledge of the events being described. It serves as an original source of information about the topic.

Similar definitions are used in library science , and other areas of scholarship. In journalism, a primary source can be a person with direct knowledge of a situation, or a document created by such a person. Primary sources are distinguished from secondary sources , which cite, comment on, or build upon primary sources, though the distinction is not a sharp one.

Newspaper Research

• Historical Newspapers (ProQuest) This link opens in a new window Includes the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, LA Times, Christian Science Monitor, and more. Newspapers are in PDF format and provide a visual representation of the newspaper.
• ProQuest Central This link opens in a new window Includes both newspapers and scholarly journals
• Historical Newspapers The Guardian and The Observer Search The Guardian (1821-2003) and its sister paper, The Observer (1791-2003)
• New York Newspaper Archive This link opens in a new window Access New York Newspaper Archives and discover stories of the past with NewspaperArchive.com. The archive covers New York history from 1753-2023, with lots of content from smaller, local newspapers. Articles have been scanned as PDFs and include images and advertisements, and are full text searchable.
• America's Historical Newspapers This link opens in a new window America's Historical Newspapers includes articles from local and regional American and Hispanic American newspapers from all 50 states. Coverage dates from 1690 to the early 20th century. Articles have been scanned as PDFs and include images and advertisements, and are full text searchable.
• American Periodicals Series Online This link opens in a new window includes digitized images of the pages of American magazines and journals published from colonial days to the dawn of the 20th century, 1740-1940.
• Times Digital Archive (London) This link opens in a new window Provides full-text access to back issues of The Times newspaper. Dates of coverage: 1785 to 2006.
• Hispanic American Newspapers, 1808-1980 This link opens in a new window Hispanic American Newspapers, 1808-1980 provides access to searchable digitized copies of newspapers printed in the U.S. during the 19th and 20th centuries for a Hispanic readership. It features hundreds of monolingual and bilingual newspapers in Spanish and English, including many obscure titles from the 19th century.
• Global Newsstream This link opens in a new window Full text of 300+ U.S. and international news sources. Includes coverage of 150+ major U.S. and international newspapers such as The New York Times and the Times of London, plus hundreds of other news sources and news wires.
• Gale Newspaper Sources This link opens in a new window The Gale NewsVault is a portal to several historical collections of British newspapers and periodicals. It enables full-text searching across several titles simultaneously, including the Times of London, Financial Times, and Times Literary Supplement, along with aggregate newspaper and periodical collections covering the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries.
• Access World News This link opens in a new window Access World News provides the html full text and, for some titles, the pdf "as printed" visual representation, of articles from a variety of national and international news sources, including newspapers, digital-native news websites, television and radio transcripts, blogs, college and university newspapers, journals, magazines, and some audio and video. Most international titles are English language. Dates of coverage vary from title to title, but primarily span the late 20th century to present.

The Billy Rose Theatre Collection

TITLE: [Scene from Othello with Paul Robeson as Othello and Uta Hagen as Desdemona, Theatre Guild Production, Broadway, 1943-44]   http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Robeson_Hagen_Othello.jpg SOURCE:Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540

The Billy Rose Theatre Collection of The New York Public Library is one of the largest and most comprehensive archives devoted to the theatrical arts. This image is a work of an employee of the United States Farm Security Administration or Office of War Information domestic photographic units, created during the course of the person's official duties. As a work of the U.S. federal government, the image is in the public domain.

• Billy Rose Collection NYPL The Billy Rose Theatre Division of The New York Public Library is one of the largest and most comprehensive archives devoted to the theatrical arts.
• New York Public Library Archives & Manuscripts On this site, you can search The New York Public Library's vast holdings, initiate a research visit, submit a query to an archivist, and access digitized material. Most Broadway shows can be viewed in the special collections. You will need a NYPL library card to view them.
• ArchiveGrid This link opens in a new window Thousands of libraries, museums, and archives have contributed nearly a million collection descriptions to ArchiveGrid.
• WorldCat - FirstSearch (OCLC) This link opens in a new window Search for books and more in libraries in the U.S. and around the world. Indicates when NYU Libraries holds a copy of a book and shows you nearby libraries with holdings.
• Internet Archive Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library offering free universal access to books, movies & music, as well as 456 billion archived web pages.
• Archives Unbound This link opens in a new window NYU is currently subscribing 14 collections:African America, Communists, and the National Negro Congress; Federal Response to Radicalism; Federal Surveillance of African Americans; Feminism in Cuba - 19th through 20th century archival document; Global Missions and Theology; India from Crown Rule to Republic; Testaments to the Holocaust (Documents and Rare Printed Materials from the Wiener Library, London); The Hindu Conspiracy Cases (Activities of the Indian Independence Movement in the U.S., 1908-1933); The Indian Army and Colonial Warfare on the Frontiers of India; The International Women’s Movement (The Pan Pacific Southeast Asia Women’s Association of the USA, 1950-1985); The Middle East Online - Arab-Israeli Relations; The Middle East Online - Iraq; U.S. and Iraqi Relations: U.S. Technical Aid; and, Witchcraft in Europe.

Historical Databases

An advert for P.T. Barnum's "Feejee Mermaid" in 1842 or thereabout. Author: P. T. Barnum or an employee, Source: Newspaper advert commons.wikimedia.org/ wiki/File:Barnum_mermai... This image (or other media file) is in the public domain because its copyright has expired.

• America: History and Life with Full Text This link opens in a new window ndexes literature covering the history and culture of the United States and Canada, from prehistory to the present. The database indexes 1,700 journals and also includes citations and links to book and media reviews. Strong English-language journal coverage is balanced by an international perspective on topics and events, including abstracts in English of articles published in more than 40 languages. Publication dates of coverage: 1964 to present.
• Historical Abstracts with Full Text (EBSCO) This link opens in a new window Covers the history of the world (excluding the United States and Canada) from 1450 to the present, including world history, military history, women's history, history of education, and more. Indexes more than 1,700 academic historical journals in over 40 languages. Publication dates of coverage: 1955 to present.
• Theatre in Context Collection This link opens in a new window O’Dell’s Annals of the New York Stage, the Oxford University Press Companion series, and Greenwood’s American Theatre Companies series are just a few of the many in-copyright sources included in the Theatre in Context Collection. Placed alongside thousands of playbills, posters, photographs, and related theatrical ephemera, users will be able to paint a more comprehensive picture of the life and evolution of dramatic works.
• Black Thought and Culture This link opens in a new window Contains 1297 sources with 1100 authors, covering the non-fiction published works of leading African-Americans. Particular care has been taken to index this material so that it can be searched more thoroughly than ever before. Where possible the complete published non-fiction works are included, as well as interviews, journal articles, speeches, essays, pamphlets, letters and other fugitive material.
• Periodicals Archive Online This link opens in a new window Provides full-text and full-image access to hundreds of journals published in the arts, humanities, social sciences, and areas of general popular interest. Each periodical is covered back to its first issue, regardless of when it began publication. International in scope, PAO covers periodicals in a number of Western languages.
• Accessible Archives This link opens in a new window Includes the following collections: African American Newspapers, The Civil War Part I. A Newspaper Perspective, The Pennsylvania Genealogical Catalog, Pennsylvania Newspaper Record, South Carolina Newspapers, and The Liberator. ** Within these collections are papers such as The Charleston Mercury, The Christian Recorder, The Colored American, Douglass Monthly, Frederick, Douglass Paper, Freedom's Journal, Godey's Lady's Book, The Liberator, The National Era, The New York Herald, The North Star, The Pennsylvania Gazette, The Pennsylvania Packet, The Maryland Gazette, Provincial Freeman, Richmond Enquirer, The South Carolina Gazette, The Gazette of the State of South Carolina, The South Carolina Gazette and Country Journal, The South Carolina and American General Gazette, Weekly Advocate.
• Early English Books Online (EEBO) This link opens in a new window Early English Books Online (EEBO) contains digital facsimile page images of virtually every work printed in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and British North America and works in English printed elsewhere from 1473-1700. Searchable full text is also available for a subset of the collection.
• Eighteenth Century Journals This link opens in a new window Eighteenth Century Journals brings together rare journals printed between 1685 and 1835, primarily in the British Isles (with some publications from India, the Caribbean, and Europe). Users can view and download page images and search transcribed full text for all journals in the collection.
• C19: The 19th Century Index This link opens in a new window C19: The 19th Century Index provides bibliographic coverage of nineteenth-century books, periodicals, official documents, newspapers and archives from the English-speaking world. This database includes the Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals (1824-1900), Poole's Index to Periodical Literature, Palmer's Index to The Times, the Nineteenth Century Short Title Catalogue, and more.
• Sixties: Primary Documents and Personal Narratives 1960 - 1974 This link opens in a new window This resource consists of diaries, letters, autobiographies and other memoirs, written and oral histories, manifestos, government documents, memorabilia, and scholarly commentary. With 150,000 pages of material at completion, this searchable collection is a resource for students and scholars researching this period in American history, culture, and politics.
• African American Archives (via Fold3) This link opens in a new window This full text resource offers access to original documents that reveal a side of the African American story that few have seen before.
• African American Experience This link opens in a new window Full-text digital resource exploring the history and culture of African Americans, as well as the greater Black Diaspora. Features access to full-text content from more than 400 titles, 3,000 slave narratives, over 2000 images, 5,000 primary sources, and 250 vetted Web sites.

Letters & Diaries /Oral Histories

• Oral History Online This link opens in a new window Provides in-depth indexing to more than 2,700 collections of Oral History in English from around the world. The collection provides keyword searching of almost 281,000 pages of full-text by close to 10,000 individuals from all walks of life.
• American Civil War: Letters and Diaries This link opens in a new window This database contains 2,009 authors and approximately 100,000 pages of diaries, letters and memoirs. Includes 4,000 pages of previously unpublished manuscripts such as the letters of Amos Wood and his wife and the diary of Maryland Planter William Claytor. The collection also includes biographies, an extensive bibliography of the sources in the database, and material licensed from The Civil War Day-by-Day by E.B. Long.
• British and Irish Women's Letters and Diaries This link opens in a new window Includes 10,000 pages of diaries and letters revealing the experiences of approximately 500 women. The collection now includes primary materials spanning more than 300 years. The collection also includes biographies and an extensive annotated bibliography of the sources in the database.
• North American Immigrant Letters, Diaries and Oral Histories This link opens in a new window North American Immigrant Letters, Diaries and Oral Histories includes 2,162 authors and approximately 100,000 pages of information, so providing a unique and personal view of what it meant to immigrate to America and Canada between 1800 and 1950. Contains contemporaneous letters, diaries, oral histories, interviews, and other personal narratives.
• North American Women's Letters and Diaries This link opens in a new window North American Women's Letters and Diaries includes the immediate experiences of 1,325 women and 150,000 pages of diaries and letters.

Gale Primary Sources

• Gale Primary Sources This link opens in a new window Gale Artemis is a groundbreaking research environment that integrates formerly disparate digital collections to enable innovative research. Gale Artemis provides an unprecedented, seamless research experience that helps students find a starting point, search across a wide array of materials and points in time, and discover new ways to analyze information.

Victorian Popular Culture

• Victorian Popular Culture This link opens in a new window An essential resource for the study of popular entertainment in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This innovative portal invites users into the darkened halls, small backrooms and travelling venues that hosted everything from spectacular shows and bawdy burlesque, to the world of magic and spiritualist séances. ** The resource is divided into four self-contained sections: Moving Pictures, Optical Entertainments and the Advent of Cinema; Music Hall, Theatre and Popular Entertainment; Circuses, Sideshows and Freaks; Spiritualism, Sensation and Magic

Historical Image Collections

commons.wikimedia.org/ wiki/File:Cushman_in_Ha... , The American actress Charlotte Cushman advertised in William Shakespeare's Hamlet at the Washington Theater in 1861.  Author:Washington Theater, SOURCE:Public Library of Congress. this image (or other media file) is in the public domain because its copyright has expired.

• American Broadsides and Ephemera This link opens in a new window American Broadsides and Ephemera offers fully searchable images of approximately 15,000 broadsides printed between 1820 and 1900 and 15,000 pieces of ephemera printed between 1760 and 1900. The remarkably diverse subjects of these broadsides range from contemporary accounts of the Civil War, unusual occurrences and natural disasters to official government proclamations, tax bills and town meeting reports. Featuring many rare items, the pieces of ephemera include clipper ship sailing cards, early trade cards, bill heads, theater and music programs, stock certificates, menus and invitations documenting civic, political and private celebrations.
• Early American Imprints, Series I. Evans, 1639-1800 This link opens in a new window Search or browse the books, pamphlets, broadsides and other imprints listed in the renowned bibliography by Charles Evans.
• Early American Imprints, Series II. Shaw-Shoemaker, 1801-1819 This link opens in a new window Search or browse the books, pamphlets, broadsides and other imprints listed in the distinguished bibliography by Ralph R. Shaw and Richard H. Shoemaker. 1801-1819
• American Antiquarian Society (AAS) Historical Periodicals Collection (EBSCO) This link opens in a new window Provide digital access to the most comprehensive collection of American periodicals published between 1691 and 1877. Included digitized images of American magazines and journals never before available outside the walls of the American Antiquarian Society. The collection is available in five series: Series 1 (1691-1820) - Series 2 (1821-1837) - Series 3 (1838-1852) - Series 4 (1853-1865) - Series 5 (1866-1877)

Link to Bobst Special Collections

• NYU Special Collections Bobst Library's Special Collections department houses significant archival resources including materials from the Downtown Collection, which documents New York City's downtown arts scene from the 1970s through the early 1990s. Maria Irene Fornés and Richard Foreman are among the many artists whose materials are housed in the Downtown Collection.
• Fales It is especially strong in English literature from the middle of the 18th century to the present, documenting developments in the novel. The Downtown Collection documents the downtown New York art, performance, and literary scenes from 1975 to the present and is extremely rich in archival holdings, including extensive film and video objects.
• Tamiment One of the finest research collections in the country documenting the history of radical politics: socialism, communism, anarchism, utopian experiments, the cultural left, the New Left, and the struggle for civil rights and civil liberties.

Guide to International Collections

• SIBMAS International Directory of Performing Arts Collections and Institutions

Books Containing Primary Source Documents

• The mediaeval stage by Chambers, E. K. (Edmund Kerchever), 1866-1954 Call Number: Online versions avail.
• The Elizabethan stage by Chambers, E. K. (Edmund Kerchever), 1866-1954 Call Number: PN2589 .C4 1965 4 vol. plus online version avail
• The diary of Samuel Pepys by Pepys, Samuel, 1633-1703 Call Number: Avail. online
• A history of theatrical art in ancient and modern times. by Mantzius, Karl, 1860-1921 Call Number: PN2106 .M313 1970 4 vol. also internet access
• Ben Jonson by Ben Jonson Call Number: online access
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• Last Updated: Aug 30, 2024 11:53 AM
• URL: https://guides.nyu.edu/primary

• Finding and Using Primary Sources
• Getting Started

Finding and Using Primary Sources: Getting Started

• Online Collections
• Books & Ebooks
• Magazines & Journals
• Data & Stats
• Citing Primary Sources

Ask a Librarian

Need Help?   Ask a Librarian for help finding primary sources in the library. 

Librarians are available from 9am to 12am most days to help you with your research. You can reach us in person, via chat, phone, or email.

Primary sources are those created contemporaneously to whatever period a researcher is studying. In contrast to secondary sources, they don't provide any analysis on a given topic after the fact; instead, they reflect on information or events as they unfolded (for example, a newspaper article, from the time of a particular historical event, discussing the historical event as it happened). Primary sources are especially useful for researchers because they reveal how certain topics and ideas were understood during a specific time and place. The particular primary sources you might use in your research, as well as how you find them, can vary a lot based on your field of study. This guide aims to provide helpful information on where to go about searching for primary sources, both at Duke and beyond.

Examples of Primary Sources (explore the other tabs for more info):

• Photographs
• Government records
• Pamphlets and other ephemeral material
• Memoirs and autobiographies

Location-Specific Resources

This guide is meant to cover primary sources in a generalized way. Duke Libraries also has a collection of guides that go over primary sources based on location. Check these out if you're looking for primary sources related to a particular history or place! Keep in mind, too, that many of our subject guides also provide some information about accessing primary sources related to specific subjects.

Location-Specific Primary Source Guides at Duke:

• Primary Sources - Africa
• Primary Sources - Asia
• Primary Sources - Global British
• Primary Sources - Latin America/Caribbean
• Primary Sources - Middle East
• Primary Sources - North America
• Primary Sources - Western Europe

Created in 2021 by Anna Twiddy and Kaylee Alexander.

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• Last Updated: Mar 4, 2024 2:18 PM
• URL: https://guides.library.duke.edu/primarysources

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Purdue Online Writing Lab Purdue OWL® College of Liberal Arts

What is Primary Research and How do I get Started?

Welcome to the Purdue OWL

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Primary research is any type of research that you collect yourself. Examples include surveys, interviews, observations, and ethnographic research. A good researcher knows how to use both primary and secondary sources in their writing and to integrate them in a cohesive fashion.

Conducting primary research is a useful skill to acquire as it can greatly supplement your research in secondary sources, such as journals, magazines, or books. You can also use it as the focus of your writing project. Primary research is an excellent skill to learn as it can be useful in a variety of settings including business, personal, and academic.

But I’m not an expert!

With some careful planning, primary research can be done by anyone, even students new to writing at the university level. The information provided on this page will help you get started.

What types of projects or activities benefit from primary research?

When you are working on a local problem that may not have been addressed before and little research is there to back it up.

When you are working on writing about a specific group of people or a specific person.

When you are working on a topic that is relatively new or original and few publications exist on the subject.

You can also use primary research to confirm or dispute national results with local trends.

What types of primary research can be done?

Many types of primary research exist. This guide is designed to provide you with an overview of primary research that is often done in writing classes.

Interviews: Interviews are one-on-one or small group question and answer sessions. Interviews will provide a lot of information from a small number of people and are useful when you want to get an expert or knowledgeable opinion on a subject.

Surveys: Surveys are a form of questioning that is more rigid than interviews and that involve larger groups of people. Surveys will provide a limited amount of information from a large group of people and are useful when you want to learn what a larger population thinks.

Observations: Observations involve taking organized notes about occurrences in the world. Observations provide you insight about specific people, events, or locales and are useful when you want to learn more about an event without the biased viewpoint of an interview.

Analysis: Analysis involves collecting data and organizing it in some fashion based on criteria you develop. They are useful when you want to find some trend or pattern. A type of analysis would be to record commercials on three major television networks and analyze gender roles.

Where do I start?

Consider the following questions when beginning to think about conducting primary research:

• What do I want to discover?
• How do I plan on discovering it? (This is called your research methods or methodology)
• Who am I going to talk to/observe/survey? (These people are called your subjects or participants)
• How am I going to be able to gain access to these groups or individuals?
• What are my biases about this topic?
• How can I make sure my biases are not reflected in my research methods?
• What do I expect to discover?

• USC Libraries
• Research Guides

Organizing Your Social Sciences Research Paper

• Primary Sources
• Purpose of Guide
• Design Flaws to Avoid
• Independent and Dependent Variables
• Glossary of Research Terms
• Reading Research Effectively
• Narrowing a Topic Idea
• Broadening a Topic Idea
• Extending the Timeliness of a Topic Idea
• Academic Writing Style
• Applying Critical Thinking
• Choosing a Title
• Making an Outline
• Paragraph Development
• Research Process Video Series
• Executive Summary
• The C.A.R.S. Model
• Background Information
• The Research Problem/Question
• Theoretical Framework
• Citation Tracking
• Content Alert Services
• Evaluating Sources
• Secondary Sources
• Tiertiary Sources
• Scholarly vs. Popular Publications
• Qualitative Methods
• Quantitative Methods
• Insiderness
• Using Non-Textual Elements
• Limitations of the Study
• Common Grammar Mistakes
• Writing Concisely
• Avoiding Plagiarism
• Footnotes or Endnotes?
• Further Readings
• Generative AI and Writing
• USC Libraries Tutorials and Other Guides
• Bibliography

Primary sources are materials that were either created during the time period being studied or were created at a later date by a participant in the events being studied, such as, a childhood memoir. They are original documents [i.e., they are not about another document or account] and reflect the individual viewpoint of a participant or observer. Primary sources represent direct, uninterpreted records of the subject of your research study.

NOTE: Information about identifying and using primary resources materials, particularly those held in the USC Libraries, can be found in the Libraries Primary Sources Research Guide .

Value of Primary Sources

Primary sources enable you to get as close as possible to understanding the lived experiences of others and discovering what actually happened during an event. However, what constitutes a primary or secondary source depends on the context in which it is being used. For example, David McCullough’s biography of John Adams could be a secondary source for a paper about John Adams, but a primary source for a paper about how various historians have interpreted the life of John Adams. When in doubt, ask a librarian for assistance!

Reviewing primary source material can be of value in improving your overall research paper because they :

• Are original materials,
• Were created from the time period involved,
• Have not been filtered through interpretation or evaluation by others, and
• Represent original thinking or experiences, reporting of a discovery, or the sharing of new information.

Examples of primary documents you could review as part of your overall study include :

• Artifacts [e.g. furniture or clothing, all from the time under study]
• Audio recordings [e.g. radio programs]
• Internet communications on email, listservs, blogs, Twitter, Facebook, and other social media platforms
• Interviews [e.g., oral histories, telephone, e-mail]
• Newspaper articles written at the time
• Original official documents [e.g., birth certificate, will, marriage license, trial transcript]
• Personal correspondence [e.g., letters]
• Photographs
• Proceedings of meetings, conferences and symposia
• Records of organizations, government agencies [e.g. annual report, treaty, constitution, government document]
• Survey Research [e.g., market surveys, public opinion polls]
• Transcripts of radio and television programs
• Video recordings
• Works of art, architecture, literature, and music [e.g., paintings, sculptures, musical scores, buildings, novels, poems]

Bahde, Anne. Using Primary Sources: Hands-On Instructional Exercises . Santa Barbara, CA: Libraries Unlimited, 2014; Brundage, Anthony. Going to the Sources: A Guide to Historical Research and Writing . Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell, 2013; Daniels, Morgan and Elizabeth Yakel. “Uncovering Impact: The Influence of Archives on Student Learning.” Journal of Academic Librarianship 39 (September 2013): 414-422; Krause, Magia G. “Undergraduates in the Archives: Using an Assessment Rubric to Measure Learning.” The American Archivist 73 (Fall/Winter 2010): 507-534; Rockenbach, Barbara. “Archives, Undergraduates, and Inquiry-Based Learning: Case Studies from Yale University Library.” The American Archivist 74 (Spring/Summer 2011): 297-311; Weiner, Sharon A., Sammie Morris , and Lawrence J. Mykytiuk. "Archival Literacy Competencies for Undergraduate History Majors." The American Archivist 78 (Spring/Summer 2015): 154-180.

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Introduction to primary source research, definitions, examples of primary sources by discipline.

• Archives terminology
• How to use library catalogs
• How to use finding aids/collection guides
• How to plan your visit to an archive
• Using digitized primary sources
• Evaluating primary sources

A primary source is an eyewitness account of an event or data obtained through original statistical or scientific research. 

What are some examples of primary sources?

• Photographs
• Official records (government reports, transcripts, court records, death certificates, etc.)
• Contemporary news reports (newspapers, telecasts, radio addresses, etc.)
• Polls and Public Opinion Data
• Laws, statutes, hearings

Secondary Source

A secondary source interprets and analyzes primary sources. These sources are one or more steps removed from the event. Secondary sources may include pictures of primary sources or quotes from them. Some types of secondary sources include: journal/magazine articles, textbooks, commentaries, and encyclopedias.

Newspapers may be either primary or secondary. Most articles in newspapers are secondary, but reporters may be considered as witnesses to an event.  Any topic on the media coverage of an event or phenomenon would treat newspapers as a primary source. 

Source: https://guides.libraries.indiana.edu/primarysources

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How to find resources by format

Why use primary resources.

Primary sources provide first-hand testimony or direct evidence concerning a topic under investigation. They present original thinking, report a discovery, or share new information. Use primary sources in historical research, or researching precedent or context on a particular topic. 

Primary sources are created by witnesses or recorders who experienced the events or conditions being documented. They are from the time period involved and have not been filtered through subsequent interpretation or evaluation.

Determining what is a primary source can be tricky and depends on the topic, subject, and discipline you are researching. The types of information that can be considered primary sources may vary depending on the subject or discipline. Also how you are using the material in your paper or project can effect this determination. For some papers or projects it may be important to view the original object but for others a primary source that has been scanned and is online is acceptable.

The types of information that can be considered primary sources may vary depending on the subject or discipline, and also on how you are using the material. For example:

• A magazine article reporting on recent studies linking the reduction of energy consumption to the compact fluorescent light bulb would be a secondary source.
• A research article or study proving this would be a primary source.
• However, if you were studying how compact fluorescent light bulbs are presented in the popular media, the magazine article could be considered a primary source.

Tip:  If you are unsure if a source you have found is primary, talk to your instructor, librarian, or archivist.

Definitions

Primary sources  are original records created at the time historical events occurred or well after events in the form of memoirs and oral histories. Primary sources are distinguished from secondary sources, which are produced some time after an event, and serve to analyze or interpret primary sources.

Archives and Manuscripts  consist of original unpublished, historical and contemporary material. 

Primary sources in reproduction  For some levels of research it is acceptable and appropriate to use primary sources that have been reproduced and published. A few examples include microfilmed newspaper articles, published diaries, and scanned images of original documents published in book form. 

Search strategies

When beginning your research, searching for primary sources is similar to other kinds of research:

• Brainstorm the kinds of sources you might need. News sources? Journals from the time period? Government documents? Have a date range in mind to narrow your search.
• Diaries, letters, and other personal papers are often unique items held in archives or special collections. One trick is to google the name of the person you're researching and the word "papers." If they are being held at another institution, you might find out if they've been digitized or not. 
• Brainstorm and track your keywords and subject terms. Use a thesaurus to think of more keywords or older terms you may not be familiar with, but may have been commonly used during the time period you are researching. Are the records likely to be in another language or another alphabet? Do you have expertise in this language? Knowing ahead of time might help with your search.
• Think about where records might be held. Because of historical colonialism and imperialism, some communities may not have control over their own records and materials. They may be held in another country entirely. 
• Arrange a visit to our Archives and Special Collections if your topic is related to the University or Minnesota history. 
• Browse our collections of online primary source databases . 

Searching in the Libraries collections

The catalog provides many types of primary sources: original archival materials, print materials with the original texts, printed facsimiles, and online resources that link to digital facsimiles. You can recognize such an item if the word "sources" appears in the subject. That word and certain others, especially when searched as a subject keyword, will help narrow your search results to primary sources.

Archival materials on campus are searchable in more depth via this  their description of their collections .

When searching our collection, use the  Libraries' Advanced Search  and enter your keywords, plus the subject term source to your search. For example, this is an Advanced search with two subject contains filters set as "Holocaust’ and ‘sources." The date range is set to start "1937" and end "1950."

Start with a broad search; you can always narrow it further after you begin searching. 

For some topics, try a more specific subject keyword instead, for example:

• personal narratives
• autobiography

Depending on the focus of your research, there are other formats that may serve as primary source material. Here are some examples:

• advertisements
• archaeological artifacts
• birth certificates
• census material
• congressional/parliamentary hearings and reports
• correspondence
• county records
• documentary photographs
• government documents
• inscriptions
• manuscripts
• news sources
• oral histories
• organizational minutes
• records of organizations
• voting records

Subject Guides

Look for subject guides in the arts, humanities, social sciences and professional programs. Each list varies and may include recommended primary source databases or other resources in that field. Even though a list may not include a primary source section, the librarian for that subject area can suggest resources and/or strategies for your topic. Consult the complete list of  subject librarians  if you need assistance in other areas of research.

History, Humanities, Social Sciences

Primary sources in these disciplines are original records created at the time historical events occurred or well after events in the form of memoirs and oral histories.

Examples include:  Letters, manuscripts, diaries, rare books, historical photographs, first-hand accounts, or documentary sources on a subject, person, event or issue; newspapers written at the time of an event, song, or film from time period, historical maps, government reports or data, and more.

Primary Sources in Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences

South Asia Primary Sources

Health Sciences, Sciences, Engineering

Primary sources in the sciences are original materials or information on which other research is based. Primary sources are also sets of data, such as health statistics, which have been tabulated, but not interpreted.

Examples include:  Journal articles of original research (written by person who did the research), patents, conference papers, dissertations, technical reports, or something personal like Einstein’s diary).

Primary, Secondary and Tertiary Sources in the Health Sciences

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Methodology

• Primary Research | Definition, Types, & Examples

Primary Research | Definition, Types, & Examples

Published on January 14, 2023 by Tegan George . Revised on January 12, 2024.

Primary research is a research method that relies on direct data collection , rather than relying on data that’s already been collected by someone else. In other words, primary research is any type of research that you undertake yourself, firsthand, while using data that has already been collected is called secondary research .

Primary research is often used in qualitative research , particularly in survey methodology, questionnaires, focus groups, and various types of interviews . While quantitative primary research does exist, it’s not as common.

Table of contents

When to use primary research, types of primary research, examples of primary research, advantages and disadvantages of primary research, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions.

Primary research is any research that you conduct yourself. It can be as simple as a 2-question survey, or as in-depth as a years-long longitudinal study . The only key is that data must be collected firsthand by you.

Primary research is often used to supplement or strengthen existing secondary research. It is usually exploratory in nature, concerned with examining a research question where no preexisting knowledge exists. It is also sometimes called original research for this reason.

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Primary research can take many forms, but the most common types are:

• Surveys and questionnaires
• Observational studies
• Interviews and focus groups

Surveys and questionnaires collect information about a group of people by asking them questions and analyzing the results. They are a solid choice if your research topic seeks to investigate something about the characteristics, preferences, opinions, or beliefs of a group of people.

Surveys and questionnaires can take place online, in person, or through the mail. It is best to have a combination of open-ended and closed-ended questions, and how the questions are phrased matters. Be sure to avoid leading questions, and ask any related questions in groups, starting with the most basic ones first.

Observational studies are an easy and popular way to answer a research question based purely on what you, the researcher, observes. If there are practical or ethical concerns that prevent you from conducting a traditional experiment , observational studies are often a good stopgap.

There are three types of observational studies: cross-sectional studies , cohort studies, and case-control studies. If you decide to conduct observational research, you can choose the one that’s best for you. All three are quite straightforward and easy to design—just beware of confounding variables and observer bias creeping into your analysis.

Similarly to surveys and questionnaires, interviews and focus groups also rely on asking questions to collect information about a group of people. However, how this is done is slightly different. Instead of sending your questions out into the world, interviews and focus groups involve two or more people—one of whom is you, the interviewer, who asks the questions.

There are 3 main types of interviews:

• Structured interviews ask predetermined questions in a predetermined order.
• Unstructured interviews are more flexible and free-flowing, proceeding based on the interviewee’s previous answers.
• Semi-structured interviews fall in between, asking a mix of predetermined questions and off-the-cuff questions.

While interviews are a rich source of information, they can also be deceptively challenging to do well. Be careful of interviewer bias creeping into your process. This is best mitigated by avoiding double-barreled questions and paying close attention to your tone and delivery while asking questions.

Alternatively, a focus group is a group interview, led by a moderator. Focus groups can provide more nuanced interactions than individual interviews, but their small sample size means that external validity is low.

Primary research can often be quite simple to pursue yourself. Here are a few examples of different research methods you can use to explore different topics.

Primary research is a great choice for many research projects, but it has distinct advantages and disadvantages.

Advantages of primary research

Advantages include:

• The ability to conduct really tailored, thorough research, down to the “nitty-gritty” of your topic . You decide what you want to study or observe and how to go about doing that.
• You maintain control over the quality of the data collected, and can ensure firsthand that it is objective, reliable , and valid .
• The ensuing results are yours, for you to disseminate as you see fit. You maintain proprietary control over what you find out, allowing you to share your findings with like-minded individuals or those conducting related research that interests you for replication or discussion purposes.

Disadvantages of primary research

Disadvantages include:

• In order to be done well, primary research can be very expensive and time consuming. If you are constrained in terms of time or funding, it can be very difficult to conduct your own high-quality primary research.
• Primary research is often insufficient as a standalone research method, requiring secondary research to bolster it.
• Primary research can be prone to various types of research bias . Bias can manifest on the part of the researcher as observer bias , Pygmalion effect , or demand characteristics . It can occur on the part of participants as a Hawthorne effect or social desirability bias .

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If you want to know more about statistics , methodology , or research bias , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

• Chi square goodness of fit test
• Degrees of freedom
• Null hypothesis
• Discourse analysis
• Control groups
• Mixed methods research
• Non-probability sampling
• Quantitative research
• Inclusion and exclusion criteria

Research bias

• Rosenthal effect
• Implicit bias
• Cognitive bias
• Selection bias
• Negativity bias
• Status quo bias

The 3 main types of primary research are:

Exploratory research aims to explore the main aspects of an under-researched problem, while explanatory research aims to explain the causes and consequences of a well-defined problem.

There are several methods you can use to decrease the impact of confounding variables on your research: restriction, matching, statistical control and randomization.

In restriction , you restrict your sample by only including certain subjects that have the same values of potential confounding variables.

In matching , you match each of the subjects in your treatment group with a counterpart in the comparison group. The matched subjects have the same values on any potential confounding variables, and only differ in the independent variable .

In statistical control , you include potential confounders as variables in your regression .

In randomization , you randomly assign the treatment (or independent variable) in your study to a sufficiently large number of subjects, which allows you to control for all potential confounding variables.

A questionnaire is a data collection tool or instrument, while a survey is an overarching research method that involves collecting and analyzing data from people using questionnaires.

When conducting research, collecting original data has significant advantages:

• You can tailor data collection to your specific research aims (e.g. understanding the needs of your consumers or user testing your website)
• You can control and standardize the process for high reliability and validity (e.g. choosing appropriate measurements and sampling methods )

However, there are also some drawbacks: data collection can be time-consuming, labor-intensive and expensive. In some cases, it’s more efficient to use secondary data that has already been collected by someone else, but the data might be less reliable.

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Types of Sources and Where to Find Them: Primary Sources

Historians and other scholars classify sources as primary or secondary . This distinction is important because it will affect how you understand these sources. In this first video of a 2-part tutorial, we will discuss primary sources.

Primary sources are most often produced around the time of the events you are studying. They reflect what their creator observed or believed about the event. These sources serve as the raw material that you’ll analyze and synthesize in order to answer your research question, and they will form key pieces of evidence in your paper’s argument. Secondary sources, in contrast, provide an interpretation of the past based on primary sources.

This newspaper article is an example of a primary source. It describes a visit Nixon made to the Soviet Union in 1959. It was written the day after by a journalist who witnessed the event, and it reflects what the journalist and his editors thought their readers would care about at the time. Another example is this pamphlet, which compiles legal testimony from a witch trial. It was published in 1646, the same year as the trial it documents. But, given the nature of the topic, you would probably want to research the pamphlet’s author, John Davenport, to determine the reliability of the transcription or what might have motivated him to publish it.

However, you should be aware that there’s nothing inherent in a source that makes it primary or secondary. Instead, its category depends on how you treat it, which in turn depends on your research question. For example, Black Reconstruction in America , written in 1935 by W.E.B. Du Bois, could be used as a secondary source for research about 19th-century America, since Du Bois draws on a range of government reports, biographies, and existing historical narratives in order to make a claim about the past. However, it could also be used as a primary source for research about Du Bois’s life or black intellectual culture during the 1930s.

One of the main challenges of dealing with primary sources is locating them. Many historical documents have never been published, and they may only be available in archives. For example, here is a page from the expense book of a student enrolled in the University of Illinois in 1930. It is a unique document located in the Student Life and Culture Archive here on campus, and it is only accessible to those who can come to the archive in person. This, on the other hand, is a published primary source: a diary, written in 1912, and first published several decades later. Our copy is in the Main Stacks.

Some of these materials, like letters, were not published at the time of creation, but have been subsequently published in a book, or digitized and made available online. For some topics, historical documents might be difficult to find because they have been lost or were never created in the first place. In other cases, the primary sources might exist, but not in English. Therefore, when you begin to formulate a topic, you will want to think about what kinds of evidence will be available to you.

When thinking about how to find or make sense of primary sources, you should ask yourself three questions:

• When and where was it created?
• Who created it?
• For what purpose or audience was it produced?

Depending on the topic and time period that you are studying, you’ll have to look for different kinds of primary sources. For example, if you are interested in the issue of birth control in 20 th century America, you can expect to find many primary sources, including:

• court cases
• legislative documents
• newspaper articles
• and letters

If you are interested in a topic from a more distant historical time period, such as the status of Jews during the Renaissance, you may have to look harder, but you can still find documents such as:

• and pamphlets

If you’re interested in first-person accounts, you’ll want to take a look at sources like:

• autobiographies
• oral histories
• literary works
• or polemical writings

You’ll have to determine if the source is a reliable account, or created with the intention of imposing a particular understanding of an event or situation. Were they created at the time of the events they recount, or were they written many years later? Some sources might make this point of view obvious, whereas others might pretend to be authoritative.

In other cases, you’ll want to think about what kinds of organizations might have created records related to your topic. You might be able to find:

• government reports
• court records
• transactions of an association
• annual reports and financial records
• or reports of non-governmental organizations.

Again, you’ll want to determine the circumstances of the document’s creation. Was it an internal document, created to gather information, or was it intended to persuade others inside or outside the group to take a certain course of action?

Visual material can also provide a powerful window onto the time period you are studying. For instance, maps not only reveal contemporary political boundaries, but also how people thought of them. Other visual sources include:

• photographs
• advertisements
• illustrations
• travel narratives
• and motion pictures

Keep in mind that primary sources can have multiple meanings. For example, this 1854 map provides evidence about the 1854 London cholera outbreak, but it also reflects a new understanding of how disease spreads and a concern with illness as a social problem.

You can find published primary sources by using the online catalog, or by searching in a digital collection of historical documents, such as the Gerritsen Collection of Women’s History, Chronicling America, and Empire Online. The History Library maintains a list of these collections on its website.

Remember, though, that these databases will not explicitly categorize the items they list as primary and secondary, and may even contain documents that you might want to use as a secondary source, so you’ll have to use your own judgment. For example, you might be interested in this Dictionary of Women’s Employment for the information it contains about wages, or for the attitudes that it conveys about what kinds of jobs are appropriate for women.

You can also find primary sources by consulting published bibliographies, and by looking at the secondary literature on your topic to see what sources other scholars have used in their research.

What Is a Primary Source?

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In research and academics, a primary source refers to information collected from sources that witnessed or experienced an event firsthand. These can be historical documents , literary texts, artistic works, experiments, journal entries, surveys, and interviews. A primary source, which is very different from a secondary source , is also called primary data.

The Library of Congress defines primary sources as "the raw materials of history—original documents and objects which were created at the time under study," in contrast to secondary sources , which are "accounts or interpretations of events created by someone without firsthand experience," ("Using Primary Sources").

Secondary sources are often meant to describe or analyze a primary source and do not give firsthand accounts; primary sources tend to provide more accurate depictions of history but are much harder to come by.

Characteristics of Primary Sources

There are a couple of factors that can qualify an artifact as a primary source. The chief characteristics of a primary source, according to Natalie Sproull, are: "(1) [B]eing present during the experience, event or time and (2) consequently being close in time with the data. This does not mean that data from primary sources are always the best data."

Sproull then goes on to remind readers that primary sources are not always more reliable than secondary sources. "Data from human sources are subject to many types of distortion because of such factors as selective recall, selective perceptions, and purposeful or nonpurposeful omission or addition of information. Thus data from primary sources are not necessarily accurate data even though they come from firsthand sources," (Sproull 1988).

Original Sources

Primary sources are often called original sources, but this is not the most accurate description because you're not always going to be dealing with original copies of primary artifacts. For this reason, "primary sources" and "original sources" should be considered separate. Here's what the authors of "Undertaking Historical Research in Literacy," from Handbook of Reading Research , have to say about this:

"The distinction also needs to be made between primary and original sources . It is by no means always necessary, and all too often it is not possible, to deal only with original sources. Printed copies of original sources, provided they have been undertaken with scrupulous care (such as the published letters of the Founding Fathers), are usually an acceptable substitute for their handwritten originals." (E. J. Monaghan and D. K. Hartman, "Undertaking Historical Research in Literacy," in Handbook of Reading Research , ed. by P. D. Pearson et al. Erlbaum, 2000)

When to Use Primary Sources

Primary sources tend to be most useful toward the beginning of your research into a topic and at the end of a claim as evidence, as Wayne Booth et al. explain in the following passage. "[Primary sources] provide the 'raw data' that you use first to test the working hypothesis and then as evidence to support your claim . In history, for example, primary sources include documents from the period or person you are studying, objects, maps, even clothing; in literature or philosophy, your main primary source is usually the text you are studying, and your data are the words on the page. In such fields, you can rarely write a research paper  without using primary sources," (Booth et al. 2008).

When to Use Secondary Sources

There is certainly a time and place for secondary sources and many situations in which these point to relevant primary sources. Secondary sources are an excellent place to start. Alison Hoagland and Gray Fitzsimmons write: "By identifying basic facts, such as year of construction, secondary sources can point the researcher to the best primary sources , such as the right tax books. In addition, a careful reading of the bibliography in a secondary source can reveal important sources the researcher might otherwise have missed," (Hoagland and Fitzsimmons 2004).

Finding and Accessing Primary Sources

As you might expect, primary sources can prove difficult to find. To find the best ones, take advantage of resources such as libraries and historical societies. "This one is entirely dependent on the assignment given and your local resources; but when included, always emphasize quality. ... Keep in mind that there are many institutions such as the Library of Congress that make primary source material freely available on the Web," (Kitchens 2012).

Methods of Collecting Primary Data

Sometimes in your research, you'll run into the problem of not being able to track down primary sources at all. When this happens, you'll want to know how to collect your own primary data; Dan O'Hair et all tell you how: "If the information you need is unavailable or hasn't yet been gathered, you'll have to gather it yourself. Four basic methods of collecting primary data are field research, content analysis, survey research, and experiments. Other methods of gathering primary data include historical research, analysis of existing statistics, ... and various forms of direct observation," (O'Hair et al. 2001).

• Booth, Wayne C., et al. The Craft of Research . 3rd ed., University of Chicago Press, 2008.
• Hoagland, Alison, and Gray Fitzsimmons. "History."  Recording Historic Structures. 2nd. ed., John Wiley & Sons, 2004.
• Kitchens, Joel D. Librarians, Historians, and New Opportunities for Discourse: A Guide for Clio's Helpers . ABC-CLIO, 2012.
• Monaghan, E. Jennifer, and Douglas K. Hartman. "Undertaking Historical Research in Literacy." Handbook of Reading Research. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2002.
• O'Hair, Dan, et al. Business Communication: A Framework for Success . South-Western College Pub., 2001.
• Sproull, Natalie L. Handbook of Research Methods: A Guide for Practitioners and Students in the Social Sciences. 2nd ed. Scarecrow Press, 1988.
• "Using Primary Sources." Library of Congress .
• Secondary Sources in Research
• Documentation in Reports and Research Papers
• Primary and Secondary Sources in History
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A publication of the harvard college writing program.

Harvard Guide to Using Sources 

• The Honor Code

Why Use Sources?

College writing assignments generally ask you to respond in some way to sources. Some assignments will require you to consult only sources assigned in class, while others will require you to locate your own sources relevant to a specific research topic. In many of your courses, your research will focus primarily on written texts such as books and scholarly articles, but you may also be asked to consult a variety of other sources, including letters, diaries, films, works of art, data from experiments, numerical data, surveys, and transcripts of interviews.

What constitutes a useful and reliable source will vary according to both your assignment and the methods used in a particular field of study. As you approach a paper in an unfamiliar field, it will be important to remember that within each field of study, scholars distinguish between primary sources, or the raw material that they analyze as they attempt to answer a question, and secondary sources, or the analyses of that raw material done by other scholars in the field. For example, for literary scholars, primary sources include fiction and poetry, while secondary sources include criticism written by other scholars about those literary texts. Historians, on the other hand, grapple with primary sources such as letters, diaries, and eyewitness accounts produced at the time of an event, as well as with secondary sources such as arguments presented by other historians. Sociologists tend to rely for raw material on quantitative data, such as surveys, censuses, and other statistics, or qualitative data, such as observation and interviews.

Social scientists in some fields, such as psychology and economics, also consider empirical journal articles (articles that describe the results of original research) published in peer-reviewed journals to be primary sources. These articles provide raw material for other scholars, who may then raise questions about the published results or develop new research based on these results. Social scientists in other fields, such as anthropology and history, however, do not consider research articles primary sources because articles in these fields do not typically present raw data. For these social scientists, journal articles would be secondary sources. For all social scientists, literature reviews and published books are considered secondary sources.

Natural scientists consider empirical articles published in peer-reviewed journals to be primary sources. These published results of experiments and analyses of data provide the raw material for other scientists to consider as they pursue their own research. Secondary sources in the natural sciences include literature reviews and books.

As a college student taking courses in many different fields, you will need to ask questions about what is considered a reliable source in each new field, and about how sources can be used appropriately in that field. At the same time, there are many common principles for using sources effectively that you will be able to carry with you from course to course. For more information on using sources in different disciplines, you can consult the Harvard Writing Project series of writing guides for specific courses and concentrations. If you are writing a paper for a course in the Government department, you should consult GovWrites for guidance. If you are writing for an anthropology course, you should consult AnthroWrites . If you are writing for a course in one of the Life Sciences fields, you should consult ScienceWrites .

When in doubt, of course, you should always consult your instructor.

• What Are You Supposed to Do with Sources?
• Writing "Original" Papers
• Using Sources Beyond Harvard

PDFs for this Section

• Why Use Sources

Research Process :: Step by Step

• Introduction
• Select Topic
• Identify Keywords
• Background Information
• Develop Research Questions
• Refine Topic
• Search Strategy
• Popular Databases
• Evaluate Sources
• Types of Periodicals
• Reading Scholarly Articles
• Primary & Secondary Sources
• Organize / Take Notes
• Writing & Grammar Resources
• Annotated Bibliography
• Literature Review
• Citation Styles
• Paraphrasing
• Privacy / Confidentiality
• Research Process
• Selecting Your Topic
• Identifying Keywords
• Gathering Background Info
• Evaluating Sources

PEN America Digital Archive

• PEN America Digital Archive The PEN America Digital Archive captures more than 50 years of cultural programming at the intersection of literature and freedom of expression advocacy. With generous support from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the digital archive makes available long-inaccessible but valuable public and private programming featuring the world’s foremost writers, intellectuals, and artists in candid and often heated discourse about the most relevant cultural and political issues of our times.

US History -- Primary Sources

• Primary Sources for US History This guide provides links to important, substantial, and freely available collections of primary sources dealing with American history. Each source has been chosen, evaluated, and annotated by librarians.
• Primary Sources for Historical Research This guide explains how to identify primary sources and provides an overview of the different kinds of primary sources.

When evaluating the quality of the information you are using, it is useful to identify if you are using a primary, secondary, or tertiary source . By doing so, you recognize if the author is reporting on his/her own first-hand experiences or relying on the views of others.

Primary Sources : : Defined

Primary sources provide firsthand testimony or direct evidence concerning a topic or question under investigation.  They are usually created by witnesses or recorders who experienced the events or conditions being documented. Often these sources are created at the time when the events or conditions are occurring.

"Primary sources . . . are defined as the direct evidence of a time and place that you are studying – any material (documents, objects, etc.) that was produced by eyewitnesses to or participants in an event or historical moment under investigation. Secondary sources, in contrast, are interpretations – often generated by scholars – that are based upon the examination of multiple primary sources."  (from  Primary Source.org )

Types of Primary Sources

What types of primary sources might have been produced that would be relevant to your topic?

Which persons or organizations might have produced materials?

Possible formats include:

• Photographs, images
• Magazines, newspapers
• Advertisements
• Movies, videos, DVDs
• Memoirs, d iaries, journals
• Audio recordings
• Interviews , l etters , s peeches
• Research data, statistics
• Documents produced by organizations
• Documents produced by government agencies

Find Primary Sources

• Special Collections
• Digital Collections

On the 6th floor of Central Library,  Special Collections  specializes in  (PRINT)  historical materials relating to

• the U.S. War with Mexico (1846-1848)
• the cartographic (maps) history of Texas and the Gulf of Mexico
• Mexico from 1810-1920.

Texas Archival Resources Online (TARO)

(TARO) contains Special Collections' detailed guides. (SEARCH FOR: University of Texas at Arlington Library, Special Collections in drop down menu)

• Archives & Locating Archives Collections Guide on archival field and using archives in the UTA Libraries Special Collections.
• Sabin Americana, 1500-1926 This link opens in a new window This digital collection contains primary works about the Americas published throughout the world from 1500 to the early 1900's. more... less... Sabin Americana, 1500-1926 offers full-text access to more than 29,000 titles about the Americas including accounts of exploration, trade, colonialism, Native Americans, etc. Primary sources include books, pamphlets, serials, broadsides, and other historical documentation that describe the society, politics, religious beliefs, customs, and momentous events that characterized life in the Americas.
• Oral History Online This link opens in a new window Oral History Online is a database of English language oral histories. more... less... Oral History Online contains more than 34,000 pages of full-text content including Ellis Island oral history narratives and rare Black Panther Party interviews. It is also an index to free oral history information on the Web. Indexed oral histories represent information from archives, repositories, and individuals around the world.
• Early Encounters in North America: Peoples, Cultures and the Environment This link opens in a new window This full-text work in progress documents the relationships among peoples in North America from 1534 to 1850 more... less... This full-text work in progress documents the relationships among peoples in North America from 1534 to 1850. It focuses on personal accounts of traders, slaves, missionaries, explorers, soldiers, native peoples, and officials. Source materials include narratives, diaries, journals, and letters.
• Sixties: Primary Documents and Personal Narratives, 1960-1974 This link opens in a new window For scholars and students researching this important period in American history, culture, and politics. more... less... The Sixties: Primary Documents and Personal Narratives 1960-1974 contains diaries, letters, autobiographies and other memoirs, written and oral histories, manifestos, government documents, memorabilia, and scholarly commentary. Spanning 1960 to 1974, The Sixties is centered on key themes that provide insight into the issues that shaped America and that still resonate in today's debates: Arts, Music, and Leisure; Civil Rights; Counter-Culture; Environmental Movement; Gay and Lesbian Rights; Law and Government; Mass Media; New Left and Emerging Neo-Conservative Movement; Science and Technology; Student Activism; Vietnam War; and Women's Movement.
• Gerritsen Collection - Women's History Online 1543-1945 This link opens in a new window A collection of books, pamphlets and periodicals reflecting the evolution of a feminist consciousness and the movement for women's rights more... less... A collection of books, pamphlets and periodicals reflecting the evolution of a feminist consciousness and the movement for women's rights. The collection consists of 265 periodicals and 4471 monographs from continental Europe, the U.S., the United Kingdom, Canada, and New Zealand. The ASCII text is searchable by keyword and Boolean operators, and records are linked to the corresponding full-text page images.
• North American Immigrant Letters, Diaries, and Oral Histories This link opens in a new window This collection includes 2,162 authors and approximately 100,000 pages of information, so providing a unique and personal view of what it meant to immigrate to America and Canada between 1800 and 1950. more... less... Composed of contemporaneous letters and diaries, oral histories, interviews, and other personal narratives, the series provides a rich source for scholars in a wide range of disciplines. In selected cases, users will be able to hear the actual audio voices of the immigrants. The collection will be particularly useful to researchers, because much of the original material is difficult to find, poorly indexed, and unpublished; most bibliographies of the immigrant focus on secondary research; and few oral histories have been published. This work in progress is composed of the personal narratives of immigrants to North America, including Canada

The New York Times (1851-2007) Offers full-page and article images with search-able full-text back to the first issue.

Dallas Morning News Historical Archive(1885-1984)  Important resource for Texas History.

Chicago Defender (1956-1973) The Chicago Defender has been a leading voice of the black community, with more than two-thirds of its readership outside Chicago. A full-image is provided for the newspaper.

• ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The Wall Street Journal (1889 - 2011) This link opens in a new window A full-image archive that includes the entire historical run of the newspaper from 1889 - 2011. See also The Wall Street Journal archive (1984 - Current) . more... less... ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The Wall Street Journal (1889 - 2002): In 1889, Dow Jones & Company first published The Wall Street Journal (formerly known as the Customers' Afternoon Letter) as a markets-focused newspaper for the country's then-fewer than 200,000 shareholders. Today, it focuses not only on the stock market, but on all aspects of global business, economics, consumer affairs, and trends and issues. Online researchers have access to more than 100 years of The Journal's accurate reporting, exclusive analysis, agenda setting, editorials, and controversial opinions. In addition to the printed stories, researchers also can study the charts, stock tables, graphics, and illustrations featured in the publication. With this resource, users can study the development of industries and companies across decades, monitor the implementation and effects of fiscal policies on the global economy, study opposing viewpoints at critical times in the world's history, and more. This title is especially appealing to those interested in business, finance, economics, and journalism.

Cartographic Connections

Here are some of the maps from Special Collections

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Primary Sources: A Research Guide

• Primary vs. Secondary
• Historical Newspapers
• Book Collections
• Find Videos
• Open Access
• Local Archives and Archival Societies
• University Archives and Special Collections at UMass Boston

Primary Sources

Texts of laws and other original documents.

Newspaper reports, by reporters who witnessed an event or who quote people who did.

Speeches, diaries, letters and interviews - what the people involved said or wrote.

Original research.

Datasets, survey data, such as census or economic statistics.

Photographs, video, or audio that capture an event.

Secondary Sources

Secondary Sources are one step removed from primary sources, though they often quote or otherwise use primary sources. They can cover the same topic, but add a layer of interpretation and analysis. Secondary sources can include:

Most books about a topic.

Analysis or interpretation of data.

Scholarly or other articles about a topic, especially by people not directly involved.

Documentaries (though they often include photos or video portions that can be considered primary sources).

When is a Primary Source a Secondary Source?

Whether something is a primary or secondary source often depends upon the topic and its use.

A biology textbook would be considered a secondary source if in the field of biology, since it describes and interprets the science but makes no original contribution to it.

On the other hand, if the topic is science education and the history of textbooks, textbooks could be used a primary sources to look at how they have changed over time.

Examples of Primary and Secondary Sources

Adapted from Bowling Green State University, Library User Education, Primary vs. Secondary Sources .

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Research Process

• Brainstorming
• Explore Google This link opens in a new window
• Explore Web Resources
• Explore Background Information
• Explore Books
• Explore Scholarly Articles
• Narrowing a Topic
• Primary and Secondary Resources
• Academic, Popular & Trade Publications
• Scholarly and Peer-Reviewed Journals
• Grey Literature
• Clinical Trials
• Evidence Based Treatment
• Scholarly Research
• Database Research Log
• Search Limits
• Keyword Searching
• Boolean Operators
• Phrase Searching
• Truncation & Wildcard Symbols
• Proximity Searching
• Field Codes
• Subject Terms and Database Thesauri
• Reading a Scientific Article
• Website Evaluation
• Article Keywords and Subject Terms
• Cited References
• Citing Articles
• Related Results
• Search Within Publication
• Database Alerts & RSS Feeds
• Personal Database Accounts
• Persistent URLs
• Literature Gap and Future Research
• Web of Knowledge
• Annual Reviews
• Systematic Reviews & Meta-Analyses
• Finding Seminal Works
• Exhausting the Literature
• Finding Dissertations
• Researching Theoretical Frameworks
• Research Methodology & Design
• Tests and Measurements
• Organizing Research & Citations This link opens in a new window
• Picking Where to Publish
• Bibliometrics
• Learn the Library This link opens in a new window

Primary Sources

Primary resources contain first-hand information, meaning that you are reading the author’s own account on a specific topic or event that s/he participated in. Examples of primary resources include scholarly research articles, books, and diaries. Primary sources such as research articles often do not explain terminology and theoretical principles in detail. Thus, readers of primary scholarly research should have foundational knowledge of the subject area. Use primary resources to obtain a first-hand account to an actual event and identify original research done in a field. For many of your papers, use of primary resources will be a requirement.

Examples of a primary source are:

• Original documents such as diaries, speeches, manuscripts, letters, interviews, records, eyewitness accounts, autobiographies
• Empirical scholarly works such as research articles, clinical reports, case studies, dissertations
• Creative works such as poetry, music, video, photography

How to locate primary research in NU Library:

• From the Library's homepage, begin your search in NavigatorSearch or select a subject-specific database from the A-Z Databases .
• Use the Scholarly/Peer-Reviewed Journal limiter to narrow your search to journal articles.
• Once you have a set of search results, remember to look for articles where the author has conducted original research. A primary research article will include a literature review, methodology, population or set sample, test or measurement, discussion of findings and usually future research directions.

Secondary Sources

Secondary sources describe, summarize, or discuss information or details originally presented in another source; meaning the author, in most cases, did not participate in the event. This type of source is written for a broad audience and will include definitions of discipline specific terms, history relating to the topic, significant theories and principles, and summaries of major studies/events as related to the topic. Use secondary sources to obtain an overview of a topic and/or identify primary resources. Refrain from including such resources in an annotated bibliography for doctoral level work unless there is a good reason.

Examples of a secondary source are:

• Publications such as textbooks, magazine articles, book reviews, commentaries, encyclopedias, almanacs

Locate  secondary resources in NU Library within the following databases:

• Annual Reviews (scholarly article reviews)
• Credo Reference (encyclopedias, dictionaries, handbooks & more)
• Ebook Central (ebooks)
• ProQuest (book reviews, bibliographies, literature reviews & more )
• SAGE Reference Methods, SAGE Knowledge & SAGE Navigator (handbooks, encyclopedias, major works, debates & more)
• Most other Library databases include secondary sources. 

Beginning the Resarch Process Workshop

This workshop introduces to the beginning stages of the research process, focusing on identifying different types of information, as well as gathering background information through electronic books.

• Beginning the Research Process Workshop Outline

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Program Teachers

Finding primary sources.

The Library of Congress makes millions of unique primary sources available online to everyone, everywhere. There are a few different ways to discover the best primary sources for you.

Select from a curated set

Primary Source Sets – Each set collects primary sources on a specific frequently-taught topic, along with historical background information and teaching ideas.

Free to Use and Reuse Sets – Batches of primary sources on engaging topics.

U.S. History Primary Sources Timeline – Explore important topics and moments in U.S. history through historical primary sources from the Library’s collections.

Search the online collections

Successful searches of the online collections of the Library of Congress, as with any archival research institution, begin with an understanding of what is likely to be found. Many considerations, including copyright, collection strengths, and how materials were acquired, factor into what can be digitized and made available online. The Library’s online collections are extensive, but they do have limits, and are strongest in the nineteenth and early part of the twentieth century.

Use the search box at the top of the Library of Congress home page . A few tips:

• Before starting your search take a moment to make a list of possible search terms.
• Remember that different words or phrases may have been used to describe events or items in the past. For example: In the past the flu was sometimes known as the grippe.
• People or places may have been identified differently or may have used different names previously. For example: Eleanor Roosevelt may be known as Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt.
• There may be different spellings for names or places during the period you’re researching.
• Use the drop-down menu to the left of the search box to select a format, like Maps, before you search.
• To the left you will see a list of ways to narrow your search results. Scroll to the bottom to Access Condition and select “Available Online.”
• Scroll back to the top and narrow your search results using the facets to the left of your search results, like Date and Location.
• Select “Gallery” or “Grid” to change how you view the results. You can:
• increase the number of items you see at one time at the bottom of the page;
• change how the results are organized so they can be seen chronologically or in alphabetical order.
• Find an item that is of interest? On the item page look to the right and find the subject headings listed. You can click on those to see what other items are listed under that same subject heading.
• Explore related items at the bottom of the page.
• Additional search tips can be found on the Library’s Search Help page .

Explore online resources

Congress.gov – Explore current and historic information on bills, laws and the legislative branch of the government.

Chronicling America – Access historic newspapers from all fifty states and the District of Columbia for accounts of historic and everyday events as reported at the time they happened.

Check with the experts

Teaching with the Library blog – Short (500 words or less) posts featuring primary sources and teaching ideas.

Other Library blogs offer tips on finding Library resources, suggestions for other search terms or research ideas, and expert secondary information.

Today in History – Provides information and links to primary sources about a specific event in history.

Research Guides - In-depth guides to Library resources on a wide variety of topics.

Ask a Librarian – Send a question to a Library of Congress reference librarian. We're happy to help!

What is a primary source? And why are primary sources important?

Teaching proper references

Today, we are pleased to announce the launch of our AI writing detection capabilities in Turnitin Feedback Studio (TFS), TFS with Originality, Turnitin Originality, Turnitin Similarity, Simcheck, Originality Check, and Originality Check+.

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Welcome to the world of primary sources, where history comes to life through the words, images, and artifacts left behind by those who witnessed and participated in past events. Primary sources are the raw materials of history, providing us with direct access to the thoughts, feelings, and experiences of people from different times and places. Whether it's a letter written by a soldier on the front lines of a war, a diary entry by a young woman during a pivotal moment in history, or a painting that captures the spirit of a particular era, primary sources offer us a unique window into the past. By exploring these sources, we can gain a deeper understanding of the world that came before us and connect with the human experiences that have shaped our present. Let’s look at exactly what is a primary source, primary source examples, the difference between primary and secondary sources, and more.

Students must have the ability to analyze their sources and learn how best to check their own biases, ask meaningful questions, and dive into lessons with both primary and secondary sources. With fake news and social media informing how modern students consume information, a primary/secondary source activity allows for a meaningful exploration of real items that illustrate the day-to-day lives of humanity.

Primary and secondary sources are all valid reference points for students as they conduct research, write papers, and figure out how they fit into the timeline of our human history. They differ in meaningful ways because primary sources are the closest to the person, place, or event, with the most intimate expression of information. From there, second and mixed sources still offer a meaningful look but diluted, with more layers of interpretation between.

Activities that feature primary and secondary sources allow students to make inferences, develop reasoned explanations, wrestle with contradictions, and compare multiple sources that represent differing points of view, confronting the complexity of the past.

Primary sources provide a first-hand record of events , created at the time of the event or from the era to which they relate. These items are created by individuals as a part of their day-to-day life, each one telling a piece of their story.

Not all lessons need to feature a primary source, but for those that do, it is important for students to recognize any preconceived notions, biases, or misunderstandings that they may bring to their own analysis. Interpreting the meaning of a primary source may be subjective; for instance, if a student does not have accurate information about the cause of a war or has strong personal opinions about a political movement, then primary sources from those events or eras may be seen through a certain lens.

Additionally, a primary source itself may be biased, like a piece of propaganda or newspaper article written with a particular slant. When consuming any type of information or media, students should be aware of how personal perspective, bias, and opinion may influence their learning.

It also helps if students can recognize the differences between primary and secondary sources. According to Healey Library at the University of Massachusetts Boston (USA):

Primary Sources are immediate, first-hand accounts of a topic, from people who had a direct connection with it. Primary sources can include:

• Texts of laws and other original documents
• Newspaper reports, by reporters who witnessed an event or who quote people who did
• Speeches, diaries, letters and interviews - what the people involved said or wrote
• Original research
• Datasets, survey data, such as census or economic statistics

Secondary Sources, on the other hand, are one step removed from primary sources, though they often quote or otherwise use primary sources. They can cover the same topic, but add a layer of interpretation and analysis. Secondary sources can include:

• Most books about any topic
• Analysis or interpretation of data
• Scholarly or other articles about a topic, especially by people not directly involved
• Documentaries (though they often include photos or video portions that can be considered primary sources)

And while many assume that primary and secondary source activities are only used in history, sociology, or psychology classes, the exploration of these documents and items is beneficial across subject areas and grade levels.

As with most things, there are exceptions. In some cases, a primary source can be a secondary source (or vice versa) depending on its use and the topic at hand. An item or document that has distance from one subject may actually offer a more intimate or valuable look at a completely different topic. Bowling Green State University (USA) offers this example:

• A biology textbook would be considered a secondary source if in the field of biology, since it describes and interprets the science but makes no original contribution to it.
• On the other hand, if the topic is science education and the history of textbooks, textbooks could be used as primary sources to look at how they have changed over time.

To start, defining a primary source and highlighting the differences between that and a secondary source is incredibly helpful for students. Often, if a student can apply the phrase “first-hand” to a source, it generally falls under the primary category. And while neither source is necessarily deemed “a better choice” for learning, it’s understood a primary source may offer close-up, more intimate information about a issue, while a secondary source tackles topics from more of a distance.

For students of any age, asking questions to start the activity can help to shape how they relate to and gather information about the item at hand. For example, when reading a diary written by someone in France during the 1940s, a student may ask: “What does this diary entry say about the day-to-day lives of individuals during the 1940s?” Compare that to: “What does this diary entry tell us about how World War II was affecting different countries in Europe at this time in history?” While the primary source is the same, the questions asked by the student lead to varying conclusions and learnings.

A variety of notable universities and institutions around the world have primary source activities online for educator use, including:

• The University of Oxford (UK) provides primary source exercises that allow students to explore the primary sources that shape Oxford historians’ latest research and teaching.
• The Smithsonian Institute (USA) offers a lesson plan idea that explores primary sources and asks students to analyze and answer Document-Based Questions (DBQs).
• The University of Queensland (Australia) has a curated collection of archives on the history of Australia, as well as a variety of other resources.
• The Library of Congress (USA) has teacher’s guides and a primary source analysis tool available for educator use. There are also downloadable PDFs that cover steps on analyzing charts and graphs, manuscripts, maps, motion pictures, and beyond. There is also a portal with digital collections that are free to use and reuse , featuring a small sample of the Library’s millions of items, including musical scores, sound recordings, prints, and more.

The activities listed in this post can be adjusted accordingly for secondary or higher education. There is value for students at every age to gain an understanding of primary and secondary sources and how studying them can help us to better grasp historical and modern times.

In addition to exploring primary sources, Turnitin offers 5 Tips for integrating source credibility activities into your curriculum , including a Source Credibility Guide poster , student-facing resources, and myriad options for assessment. This information bridges the value of primary and secondary sources with the integral skills needed to glean the right information from them.

Instructors may also want to explicitly teach about fact vs opinion. This type of lesson allows students to gather a more accurate understanding of historical events as they pertain to current events and mindset. For instance, talk to students about articles on racism and how they read differently now than in the 1960s because of what was considered “fact” in that era. Lisa Macdonald offers a lesson plan for primary education that dives into fact vs opinion. This type of exercise can help build a solid groundwork for students in early learning stages as they learn how to build their research skills and interact with different types of sources online and in print.

Good scholarly practice is to cite the primary source over a secondary source, as it is closer to the actual person or event in history.

In MLA, the citation format for an online source is as follows:

• Name of the author, compiler, director, editor, narrator, performer, or translator of the work (when the site is also the publisher omit here and instead place in publisher section)
• Title of the work (italicized if the work is independent; in roman type and quotation marks if the work is part of a larger work)
• Title of the overall website (italicized), if distinct from item 2
• Other Contributors
• Version or edition used
• Publisher or sponsor of the site; omit if not available.
• Date of publication; omit if not available.
• DOI or URL (DOI is encouraged and “http://” is left out)
• Date of access (recommended for online resources)

Last name, First name. “Section of Website.” Title of the Website, Other Contributors, Version, Number, Name of publisher or sponsor, Date of publication, DOI or URL. Day Month Year of access. opt. URL.

Library of Congress. United States Government, 10 Feb 2012, www.loc.gov/. Accessed 16 Feb. 2017.

Citing the primary source is ideal for research and works of scholarly writing. If the original work is unavailable or out of print, one can cite the secondary source, albeit sparingly.

For APA, citing secondary sources would look like this :

• In the reference list, provide an entry for the secondary source that you used.
• In the text, identify the primary source and write “as cited in” the secondary source that you used.
• If the year of publication of the primary source is known, also include it in the text citation.

For example, if you read a work by Lyon et al. (2014) in which Rabbitt (1982) was cited, and you were unable to read Rabbitt’s work yourself, cite Rabbitt’s work as the original source, followed by Lyon et al.’s work as the secondary source. Only Lyon et al.’s work appears in the reference list.

• (Rabbitt, 1982, as cited in Lyon et al., 2014)

If the year of the primary source is unknown, omit it from the in-text citation.

• Allport’s diary (as cited in Nicholson, 2003)

Overall, there is profound value in teaching primary and secondary sources with students at any age and in every subject area. Secondary sources retell, analyze, or interpret events, usually at a distance of time or place, while primary sources provide a focused, intimate look at a topic. Citing both primary and secondary sources provides balanced viewpoints for students to analyze, developing necessary critical thinking skills. From there, students will be able to come to their own reasoned conclusions about the events and issues of history and our present day.

Explore millions of high-quality primary sources and images from around the world, including artworks, maps, photographs, and more.

Explore migration issues through a variety of media types

• Part of The Streets are Talking: Public Forms of Creative Expression from Around the World
• Part of The Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol. 34, No. 1 (Winter 2020)
• Part of Cato Institute (Aug. 3, 2021)
• Part of University of California Press
• Part of Open: Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture
• Part of Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies, Vol. 19, No. 1 (Winter 2012)
• Part of R Street Institute (Nov. 1, 2020)
• Part of Leuven University Press
• Part of UN Secretary-General Papers: Ban Ki-moon (2007-2016)
• Part of Perspectives on Terrorism, Vol. 12, No. 4 (August 2018)
• Part of Leveraging Lives: Serbia and Illegal Tunisian Migration to Europe, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (Mar. 1, 2023)
• Part of UCL Press

Harness the power of visual materials—explore more than 3 million images now on JSTOR.

Enhance your scholarly research with underground newspapers, magazines, and journals.

Explore collections in the arts, sciences, and literature from the world’s leading museums, archives, and scholars.

How To Find...

• Books & Ebooks
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• Dissertations & Theses
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• Music & Scores
• Primary Sources
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Nabb research center.

Looking for primary sources related to Salisbury University, local history, family genealogy, or the Eastern Shore? Visit the Nabb Research Center, located on the fourth floor of the Academic Commons!

• Nabb Center Collections
• Nabb Center Finding Aid Portal The Finding Aid Portal provides descriptions of the Nabb Research Center’s archival collections, as well as their affiliated artifacts, to help facilitate access to the materials.

Library Databases

• JSTOR (including ARTSTOR) This link opens in a new window After searching, use the "Primary source content" limiters on the left side of the screen to see primary documents, images, audio files, books, and more.
• Archives Unbound This link opens in a new window Archives Unbound presents topically-focused digital collections of historical documents that support the research and study needs of college & university scholars & students.
• American Historical Periodicals (American Antiquarian Society). This link opens in a new window A highly comprehensive primary source history of the American experience that spans four centuries with multiple perspectives on the thought, culture, and society of North America.
• Black Freedom Struggle in the United States: Challenges and Triumphs in the Pursuit of Equality This link opens in a new window Contains over 3,000 documents focused on different phases of Black Freedom from the 1700s to present.
• Slavery in America and the World: History, Culture & Law This link opens in a new window Includes hundreds of pamphlets and books written about slavery— defending it, attacking it or simply analyzing it, including an expansive slavery collection of mostly pre-Civil War materials.
• Japanese-American Relocation Camp Newspapers: Perspectives on Day-to-Day Life This link opens in a new window This collection documents life in the internment camps.
• Archives of Sexuality and Gender: LGBTQ History and Culture since 1940, Parts I and II This link opens in a new window This primary source database includes content on the social, political, health, and legal issues impacting LGBTQ communities around the world, such as the gay rights movement, activism, the HIV/AIDS crisis, and marginalization within the LGBTQ community.
• Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000: Scholar's Edition This link opens in a new window Organized around the history of women in social movements in the U.S. between 1600 and 2000, this vast collection of documents also includes book, film, and website reviews, notes from the archives, and teaching tools.
• Victoria Research Web This link opens in a new window Dedicated to the scholarly study of nineteenth-century Britain, and to aiding researchers, teachers, and students in their investigations of any and all aspects of this fascinating period.

Online Primary Sources

Most states and countries keep primary documents related to their history, culture, and people. If you're working on a project related to a specific place, Google "country national archives". 

• Maryland State Archives This link opens in a new window The central depository for Maryland government records from 1634 onward. Colonial, executive, legislative, and judicial records; county probate, land, and court records; church records; business records; state publications and reports; and special collections of private papers, maps, photos, and newspapers.
• National Archives NextGen Catalog The National Archives holds historical U.S. government documents (federal, congressional, and presidential records), many of which are digitized and available to the public.
• Library of Congress Search box located in the top right. The Library of Congress maintains a massive online repository that includes articles, maps, musical scores, legislation, film, photographs, and thousands of other historical US documents.
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• Essay Editor

How to Write a Table of Contents for Research Paper: A Complete Guide

After hundreds of hours of non-stop working, the research essay is finished! Unfortunately, it is not the time to celebrate. That’s when you must get down to one of the least pleasant things in professional college or high school writing – a table of contents. The following article will define table of contents, discuss its purpose, and provide guidance on how to make a table of contents for a research paper.

What is a research paper table of contents?

Academic essays can be from 2–3 to hundreds pages long. They can contain a wide range of different studies, theoretical analyses, and practical examinations. They make up the substance of the study and assist you in showcasing the subject of your labor.

Since you are always required to cover many different aspects in your study, navigating the document quickly becomes top priority. This is why all expansive academic papers require a table of contents (also known as TOC). 

This fragment of your paper is an overview of every topic explored in it. The TOC looks like an invisible table where cells house a chapter, segment, or simple section heading. Consequently, each title corresponds to a page index which is also indicated in the TOC. This indicator is located at the beginning of the document, preceding the introduction but following the title page.

Why do we need a table of contents in research paper?

Let’s break down the purpose of table of contents as well as its essential functions.

• Usability. By scanning TOC, readers can quickly find certain sections or chapters within the research.
• Structure. TOC helps the audience gain an immediate understanding of the subject matter and how the study has been organized and conducted.
• Professional presentation. It betters the professional appearance of the essay by reflecting your insightful planning as well as attention to detail.
• Clarity. A TOC makes sure to list all big chapters, sections, sub-sections, and supplements, which navigates the audience and sets their expectations for what the research covers.

Overall, the purpose of TOC is to improve the reader's experience by making the research more accessible and easier to navigate.

What guideline should you follow when preparing a table of contents?

In a nutshell, the way you organize, format and make a TOC is subject to the style guide required by your professor. Here is an exploration on how to prepare a TOC for different writing guides.

• Title. Per the MLA style, a table of contents is not obligatory. Nonetheless, if your professor requires it, this part must be called "Contents" or "Table of Contents" and lined up at the top center area of the page.
• Formatting. The MLA guide generally uses a simpler approach with fewer formalities regarding the TOC. Consult your professor’s requirements to see which kind of spacing and dot leaders rules you will need to apply.
• Page index. MLA format traditionally uses Arabic numerals in the main body, but any TOC is up to the discretion of the author or professor.
• Sections. The TOC should include all major parts of the essay like introduction, body sections, works cited, and appendices.
• Title. In the APA style, the TOC should be named "Table of Contents" and centered at the top.
• Headings. While compiling your APA table of contents, you must Include all major sections like abstract, foreword, method, conclusions, discussion, references, and supplements.
• Formatting. APA has stricter requirements for formatting rules. You should use double-spacing throughout the TOC, which is in line with the rest of the study and the general requirements of the APA guide. The font repeats the one used in the main text (e.g., Times New Roman, 12-point).
• Page index. Align page indexes along the right side of the page and use dot leaders to connect the headings to the page indexes.

Chicago style

• Title. The TOC should be called "Contents" and placed at the top center of the page.
• Formatting. The Chicago Manual suggests single-spacing within entries and double-spacing between entries. Fonts should be consistent with the rest of the document.
• Headings. Include all chapters or major parts and list subheadings if needed. Use dot leaders between entries and page indexes.
• Hierarchy. Always make sure to distinguish main headings from subheadings for better readability. This might be done through bold or italic formatting, and indentation for subheadings.
• Page indexes. Place page indexes flush with the right margin. It is permissible to use Roman numerals for introductory pages, but the central text should only contain Arabic numerals.

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