Media Studies

To learn more about the level of scrutiny and review different kinds of media sources undergo, use this overview resource: https://www.pcc.edu/library/scripts/know-your-sources/index.html

Sources covered: Social media, magazines and newspapers, trade journals, academic journals, and encyclopedias 

Names for primary source types can be used for keyword searching.

Primary Sources provide direct or first-hand evidence about an event, object, person or work of art.

• Usually contemporary to the events and people described

• May be written and non-written

• Examples include:
• diaries
• works of art and literature
• speeches
• audio and video recordings
• photographs and posters
• newspaper ads and stories
• laws and legislative hearings
• plant and animal specimens
• original research studies

Secondary Sources lack the immediacy of a primary record.

• Produced sometime after an event happened

• Contain information that has been interpreted, analyzed or processed

• Often based on primary sources

• Examples:
• history textbooks
• interpretive journal articles
• book reviews 

Use search terms for names, events, topics, or document types.

Document collections

• feminism AND history AND sources
• Roosevelt Franklin AND archives
• Vietnam AND foreign relations AND sources  

Speeches

• American AND speeches
• Douglass Frederick AND speeches
• statesmen AND speeches 

Interviews, personal accounts, and letters

• novelists AND correspondence
• rap musicians AND interviews
• working class women AND diaries 

Commercial and advertising art

• advertising AND catalogs
• advertising AND collectibles AND catalogs
• commercial art AND catalogs 

Film and documentaries

• biographical films AND Mahatma Gandhi
• documentary films AND race relations
• documentary films AND sports