Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary Sources

When you are instructed to use primary resources in your research, it is easy to be confused. In general,

Primary resources are original sources of information on which other research is based, including documents such as poems, diaries, court records, interviews, surveys, and fieldwork. Primary materials also include research results generated by experiments, which are published as journal articles in some fields of study and sets of data, such as census statistics which have been tabulated, but not interpreted.

Secondary resources describe or analyze the primary sources. Examples of secondary sources include: dictionaries, encyclopedias, textbooks, and books and articles that interpret or review research works.

Tertiary resources list, compile, digest or index primary or secondary sources. Examples of tertiary resources include indexes, handbooks, digests and almanacs.

If you think about the publication details of the information and consider the following you will often find your answer:

Timing of the event recorded--If the article was composed close to the time of the event recorded, chances are it is primary material. For instance, a letter written by a soldier during the Vietnam War is primary material, as is an article written in the newspaper or a soldier's letter home during the Civil War. However, an article written analyzing the results of the battle at Gettysburg is secondary material.
Rhetorical aim of the written item--Often, an item that is written with a persuasive, or analytical, aim is secondary material. These materials have digested and interpreted the event, rather than reported on it.
Context of the researching scholar--Primary materials for a critic studying the literature of the Civil War are different from primary materials for a historian studying Civil War prisons. The critic's primary materials are the poems, stories, and films of the era. The research scientist's primary materials would be the diaries and writings of slave families.

CHART ONE: CYCLE OF INFORMATION

	PRIMARY	SECONDARY	TERTIARY
DEFINITIONS	Sources that contain raw, original, unevaluated information.	Sources that digest, analyze, evaluate and interpret the information contained within primary sources.	Sources that compile, analyze, and digest secondary sources.
FORMATS--depends on the kind of analysis being conducted.	Often newspapers, weekly and monthly-produced magazines; letters, diaries.	Often scholarly journal articles and books.	Often reference books.
EXAMPLE: Historian (studying the Civil War)	Newspaper articles, weekly news magazines, monthly magazines, diaries, correspondence	Articles in scholarly journals analyzing the war, possibly footnoting primary documents; books analyzing the war.	Exploring Civil War Wisconsin Ref E 537.B37 2003
Example: Literary Critic (studying the literature of the Civil War)	Novels, poems, plays, diaries, correspondence.	Articles in scholarly journals analyzing the literature; books analyzing the literature; formal biographies of writers of the war.	The Language of the Civil War Ref E 468.9 .W755 2001
Example: Military Expert	Newspaper articles, government reports, correspondence	Articles in scholarly journals analyzing the battles; books analyzing the battles, biographies	Atlas of the Civil War Ref E 487.A85 1994

Chart Two lists Library of Congress Subject heading subdivisions you may see on library catalog items. Use a keyword search combining the subdivision with your topic to find each type of material.

PRIMARY

SECONDARY

TERTIARY

cases
correspondence
description and travel
diaries
fiction
interview
personal narrative
pictorial works
poetry
short stories
sources

criticism and interpretation
history
history and criticism
government policy
law and legislation
moral and ethical aspects
political aspects
politics and government
psychological aspects
public opinion
religion
religious aspects
social policy
study and teaching

abstracts
bibliography
chronology
classification
dictionaries
directories
encyclopedias
guidebooks
handbooks, manuals, etc.
identification
indexes
registers
statistics
index

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This page last modified: Friday, September 04, 2009