Identifying Primary and Secondary Sources

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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:

• 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	treatise on innovative analysis of Neolithic artifacts
Art	sketch book	conference proceedings on French Impressionists
History	Emancipation Proclamation (1863)	book on the anti-slavery struggle
Journalism	interview	biography of publisher Randolph Hearst
Law	legislative hearing	law review article on anti-terrorism legislation
Literature	novel	literary criticism on Desolation Angels
Music	score of an opera	biography of the composer Mozart
Political Science	public opinion poll	newspaper article on campaign finance reform
Rhetoric	speech	editorial comment on Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech
Sociology	voter registry	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.

Example Subject Heading Subdivisions:
 

anecdotes	diaries	pictorial works
archives	documentary films	portraits
biography	exhibitions	public opinion
caricatures and cartoons	interviews	songs and music
cases studies	manuscripts	sources
catalogs	maps	speeches
comic books, strips	notebooks, sketchbooks	statistics
correspondence	personal narratives	statues
description and travel	photography

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.

• To search for document collections, Enter:
  
  feminism AND history AND sources
  Roosevelt Franklin AND archives
  Vietnam AND foreign relations AND sources
  
  

• To search for oratory and speeches, Enter:
  
  American AND speeches
  Douglass Frederick AND speeches
  statesmen AND speeches
  
  

• To search for interviews, personal accounts, and letters, Enter:
  
  novelists AND correspondence
  rap musicians AND interviews
  working class women AND diaries
  
  

• To search for commercial and advertising art, Enter:
  
  advertising AND catalogs
  advertising AND collectibles AND catalogs
  commercial art AND catalogs
  
  

• To search for film and documentaries, Enter:
  
  biographical films AND Mahatma Gandhi
  documentary films AND race relations
  documentary films AND sports

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