ENG 103 - Critical & Argumentative Writing - Professor Walker: Primary or Secondary?

For some research assignments, it is important to use primary sources, instead of or in addition to secondary sources. What’s the difference?

Primary sources are original documents or objects—first-hand information or the raw material. These original documents are often diaries, letters, memoirs, journals, speeches, or interviews. They may also include published pieces such as newspaper or magazine articles, as long as they are written soon after the fact and not as historical accounts. Eye witness accounts, photographs, audio or video recordings, research reports in the natural or social sciences, or original literary or theatrical works are also considered primary sources.

Secondary sources interpret primary sources. Secondary sources include comments on, interpretations of, or discussions about the original material. You can think of secondary sources as second-hand information. Secondary source materials can be articles in newspapers or popular magazines, book or movie reviews, or articles found in scholarly journals that evaluate or criticize someone else’s original research.

Examples of Primary and Secondary Sources

Some suggestions for where to find primary sources:

Books:

Use the "All Fields" search and try one of these options (depends on your topic)

To find a collection of primary documents related to your topic:

Do an "All Fields" search on Your topic and the word "sources"  Example:  Cold War sources

To find letters by a person:  

Do an "All Fields" search on the name of a person and the word "correspondence" (correspondence is another word for letters) Example:  Jackie Robinson correspondence

To find first-hand account of an event:

Do an "All Fields" search on the event and the term "personal narratives" Example: Civil war personal narratives

A place to start:

American Decades: Primary Sources - this source has a variety of primary sources such as transcripts, ads, reports related to big historical events in the last century.  This sources is available in Gale Virtual Reference Library. The library also has this source in print in the reference area:  REF E169.1 .A471977 2004

For articles:

Academic Search Premier - there are some publications, including the Congressional Digest, Vital Speeches of the Day, The Nation, and Foreign Affairs indexed back to before 1945 - most results will be from between 1975-2013. You can also search for a topic and use the advanced search screen to limit to primary documents.

National Newspapers Expanded - Full-text collection of national newspapers: Christian Science Monitor, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post.  Indexing only goes back to 1980

Newspaper Source Plus- 860 full-text newspapers, but only back to 2002

Ethnic Newswatch - Multidisciplinary, full-text collection of the newspapers, magazines and journals from ethnic, minority and native presses. Covers current and historical topics. Searchable in both English and Spanish. Oldest articles from about 1959.

CQ Electronic Library - This is the best database for government documents.  Documents described as "overviews" or "legislative chronologies" would not qualify as primary sources.

**Vital Speeches of the Day - this is a great resource for finding speeches by prominent people.  This title is available in full text in Academic Search Premier back to 1934.  The library also owns Vital Speeches of the Day in print back to 1958.

**If you are looking for pictures - of clothing or household items or people from a certain era, Life has a lot of photographs and we have Life magazine from 1937-1972 and 1990-2000 in print and 1978-1990 in microfiche

Other databses with primary sources

African American Experience

American Government

American Indian Expierience

CQ Public Affairs

Latino American Experience

I think the databases above are the best ones for your project, but to see a list of all the library databases, go here.

Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature we have this index back to 1901.  This is just an index, so if you find an article that you like, you will need to check our journal list to see if we own the magazine or journal you need.

New York Times Index - we have this index back to 1955 and we have the New York Times on microfilm back to 1955.  You may want to search the archive at NYtimes.com instead of using the printed index and then get the article from the microfilm.

Los Angeles Times Index - we have this print index back to 1972 and we have the newspaper back to 1972 in microfilm.