16 Primary vs. Secondary Sources

Primary Sources

Ready to gather sources for your research paper or report? Great! Depending on the genre you’re writing in or your audience’s expectations, you may need to look at both primary and secondary sources. But, what are primary and secondary sources?

Primary sources are those sources we rely on for firsthand information. The information contained in primary sources is sometimes unedited, meaning it is in its original form and hasn’t been proofread or revised by another person yet. Any type of information that is original and uninterpreted is a primary source.

To be extra specific, primary sources are those that provide firsthand, original information. Some examples of primary sources might include:

• Artifacts (e.g. coins, plant specimens, fossils, furniture, tools, clothing, all from the time under study)
• Audio recordings (e.g. radio programs)
• Diaries and letters
• Internet communications on email, listservs
• Interviews (e.g., oral histories, telephone, e-mail)
• Journal articles published in peer-reviewed publications
• Newspaper articles written at the time
• Original Documents (i.e. birth certificate, will, marriage license, trial transcript)
• Patents
• Photographs
• Proceedings of Meetings, conferences and symposia
• Records of organizations, government agencies (e.g. annual report, treaty, constitution, government document)
• Speeches
• Survey Research (e.g., market surveys, public opinion polls)
• Video recordings (e.g. television programs)
• Works of art, architecture, literature, and music (e.g., paintings, sculptures, musical scores, buildings, novels, poems).

Secondary Sources

Secondary sources differ from primary sources in that they are not original or firsthand accounts; they come to us secondhand. Secondary sources also use primary sources and build on primary sources through analysis, interpretation, commentary, and criticism. In fact, your research paper will ultimately be a secondary source. Examples of secondary sources might include:

• Biographical works
• Commentaries, criticisms
• Dictionaries, Encyclopedias
• Histories
• Journal articles (depending on the disciple can be primary)
• Magazine and newspaper articles (this distinction varies by discipline)
• Monographs, other than fiction and autobiography
• Textbooks
• Website (could, at times, be considered primary)

You might also find this table comparing types of primary versus secondary sources helpful.