ENG101: Composition Research Guide

Primary Sources

• Are a product of direct experience and are original content.
• Examples: Accounts by participants/witnesses (social media, autobiography, journals), works of art, music, photographs, government documents, maps, or data.   

Secondary Sources

• Interpretations, analyses, or summaries of other sources
•  Examples: Encyclopedias, textbooks, magazine articles, reviews.

Sometimes Primary, Sometimes Secondary

• If something is primary or secondary can depend on the topic and context it is being used.
  Example:  A documentary on the St. Regis Mohawk Nation in upstate NY.
                   If you were researching the Mohawk people the documentary would be a secondary source.
                   But if you were researching the filmmaker/director it would be a primary source.

Instructors often ask students to find scholarly articles for their research papers.  For most research papers, scholarly articles are the preferred sources for supporting a thesis statement. Distinguishing scholarly sources from other types of sources can often be confusing, so take a look at the web page linked below to help you distinguish the differences.