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Identifying Primary and Secondary Sources
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.
Primary Source Searching
The chart below illustrates possible uses of primary and secondary sources by discipline
| Discipline Archaeology Art Biology History Journalism Law Literature Music Political Science Psychology Rhetoric Sociology |
Primary Source farming tools sketch book Data from laboratory experiments published in a scholarly journal Emancipation Proclamation interview legislative hearing novel score of an opera public opinion poll Data from participant surveys published in a conference proceeding speech voter registry |
Secondary treatise on innovative analysis of neolithic artifacts conference proceedings on French Impressionism A review article on the results of many similar lab experiments book on the anti-slavery struggle biography of publisher Katharine 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 systematic review of many studies with similar data editorial comment on Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech Ph.D. dissertation on Hispanic voting |
Primary Source Searching in IUCAT
Use the IU online library ca
talog (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 personal narratives photography |
pictorial works portraits public opinion songs and music sources speeches sketchbooks statistics statutes |
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 ALL Fields which will give you a larger but less focused result. Use the AND operator (or the + sign) 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 feminism AND history AND sources Roosevelt Franklin AND archives Vietnam AND foreign relations AND sources |
To search for oratory and speeches American AND speeches Douglass Frederick AND speeches statesmen AND speeches |
| To search for interviews, personal accounts, and letters novelists AND correspondence rap musicians AND interviews working class women AND diaries |
To search for pictorial works inscriptions AND Greece AND catalogs documentary photography AND Salgado Sebastião AND exhibitions painting AND Australian aboriginal AND exhibitions |
| To search for commercial and advertising art advertising AND catalogs advertising AND collectibles AND catalogs commercial art AND catalogs |
To search for film and documentaries biographical films AND Mahatma Gandhi< documentary films AND race relations documentary films AND sports |