Skip to Main Content

Primary Sources Research Guide

This guide gives information about primary sources and how to locate them in the Library Catalog, our databases, and external sites.

Primary and Secondary Sources

What is a secondary source?

Secondary sources are those that describe, analyze, interpret, or review your primary source. Often, secondary sources are written years after the fact, and can thus take into consideration other events, or otherwise place a primary source in historical context. They include articles, books, and other works that provide information about a past event or another work. They often give overviews, interpret or analyze the events or works, or are critical studies or reviews.

A Chart Showing Some Differences between Primary & Secondary Sources

Examples of primary and secondary resources by discipline
	Primary Resource	Secondary Resource
Art	Van Gogh's Starry Night	Book or article critiquing the artwork
Biological Science	Timed-series of data reporting an ocean's temperatures	Data visualizations of rise in ocean temperatures over time
Criminal Justice	Social-media posts of police brutality	Report from a task force investigating policing practices
History	Newspaper article from the 1930s and 1940s detailing bombings during WWII	Book analyzing military strategies during WWII
Literature	Toni Morrison's Sula	Article providing critique or analysis of characters in Sula
Political Science	The Federalist Papers	Federal judge's justification for Supreme Court decisions using The Federalist Papers
Theater	Script from Lin Manuel Miranda's Hamilton	Article analyzing the historical accuracy of Hamilton

This chart comes from Kaitlin Springmier's "Library Instruction: Evaluating Sources" Canvas class (Links to an external site.), Sonoma State University Library, (Links to an external site.)is licensed under CC BY 4.0 (Links to an external site.) / A derivative of original work