Identifying Primary and Secondary
Sources:
A Preliminary Guide
The materials, evidence, or data used in your research are known as sources.
As foundations of your research, these sources of information are typically
classified into two broad categories—primary and secondary.
Primary Sources
A primary source provides direct or firsthand evidence about an event, object,
person or work of art. Characteristically, primary sources are contemporary to
the events and people described and show minimal or no mediation between the
document/artifact and its creator. As to the format, primary source materials can
be written and non-written, the latter including sound, picture, and artifact.
Examples of primary sources include:
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personal correspondence and diaries
works of art and literature
speeches and oral histories
audio and video recordings
photographs and posters
newspaper ads and stories
laws and legislative hearings
census or demographic records
plant and animal specimens
coins and tools
Secondary Sources
A secondary source, in contrast, lacks the immediacy of a primary record. As
materials produced sometime after an event happened, they contain information
that has been interpreted, commented, analyzed or processed in such a way that
it no longer conveys the freshness of the original. History textbooks, dictionaries,
encyclopedias, interpretive journal articles, and book reviews are all examples of
secondary sources. Secondary sources are often based on primary sources.
Primary and Secondary Sources Compared
An example from the printed press serves to further distinguish primary from
secondary sources. In writing a narrative of the political turmoil surrounding the
2000 U.S. presidential election, a researcher will likely tap newspaper reports of
that time for factual information on the events. The researcher will use these
reports as primary sources because they offer direct or firsthand evidence of the
events, as they first took place. A column in the Op/Ed section of a newspaper
commenting on the election, however, is less likely to serve these purposes. In
this case, a columnist’s analysis of the election controversy is considered to be a
secondary source, primarily because it is not a close factual account or recording
of the events.
Bear in mind, however, that primary and secondary sources are not fixed
categories. The use of evidence as a primary or secondary source hinges on the
type of research you are conducting. If the researcher of the 2000 presidential
election were interested in people’s perceptions of the political and legal electoral
controversy, the Op/Ed columns will likely be good primary sources for surveying
public opinion of these landmark events.
The chart below illustrates possible uses of primary and secondary sources by
discipline:
Discipline
Primary Source
Secondary Source
Archeology
farming tools
Art
sketch book
History
Emancipation Proclamation
(1863)
interview
legislative hearing
novel
score of an opera
public opinion poll
treatise on innovative analysis of Neolithic
artifacts
conference proceedings on French
Impressionists
book on the anti-slavery struggle
Journalism
Law
Literature
Music
Political
Science
Rhetoric
Sociology
speech
voter registry
biography of publisher Katherine Meyer Graham
law review article on anti-terrorism legislation
literary criticism on The Name of the Rose
biography of composer Georges Bizet
newspaper article on campaign finance reform
editorial comment on Martin Luther King’s “I
Have a Dream” speech
Ph.D. dissertation on Hispanic voting patterns
Primary Source Searching in IUCAT
Use the IU Libraries online catalog (IUCAT) to look for primary source materials.
Employ the Library of Congress subject heading subdivisions below to retrieve
primary materials from IUCAT. These subdivisions indicate the form in which the
material is organized and presented.
Subject Heading
Subdivisions
anecdotes
archives
biography
caricatures and cartoons
case studies
catalogs
comic books, strips
correspondence
description and travel
diaries
documentary films
exhibitions
interviews
manuscripts
maps
notebooks, sketchbooks
personal narratives
photography
pictorial works
portraits
public opinion
songs and music
sources
speeches
statistics
statues
Primary Source Search Examples
Use the subject subdivisions to build search statements that may include names,
events or topics. Below is a select sample of library catalog searches. Enter
these terms and search for as Subject in IUCAT. You may also wish to try
search for a Keyword Anywhere which will give you a larger but less focused
result.
Use the AND operator to combine ideas; for example, novelists and
correspondence. AND will find your search words in any section of the subject
headings and will increase the likelihood that you will find relevant material.
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To search for document collections, Enter:
feminism AND history AND sources
Roosevelt Franklin AND archives
Vietnam AND foreign relations AND sources
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To search for oratory and speeches, Enter:
American AND speeches
Douglass Frederick AND speeches
statesmen AND speeches
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To search for interviews, personal accounts, and letters, Enter:
novelists AND correspondence
rap musicians AND interviews
working class women AND diaries
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To search for commercial and advertising art, Enter:
advertising AND catalogs
advertising AND collectibles AND catalogs
commercial art AND catalogs
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To search for film and documentaries, Enter:
biographical films AND Mahatma Gandhi
documentary films AND race relations
documentary films AND sports
Ask a Librarian
For further assistance with identifying primary sources for your project, please
contact a library subject specialist or a librarian at the reference desks in the
Undergraduate Library Services or the Research Collections Reference
Department in the Main Library. You can also send a question to “Ask a
Librarian” at libref@indiana.edu.
Written by Luis A. González
Reference Department
Main Library
Indiana University, Bloomington
August 2002
This publication is available on the World Wide Web:
http://www.indiana.edu/~libugls/Publications/primary.html