In a number of fields, the sources researchers work with are usually classified as either primary sources or secondary sources. (Content taken and adapted from Guidelines for Primary Source Literacy, Developed by the ACRL RBMS-SAA Joint Task Force on the Development of Guidelines for Primary Source Literacy)
What are primary sources?
Primary sources are materials in a variety of formats, created at the time under study, that serve as original evidence documenting a time period, event, people, idea, or work. Primary sources can be printed materials (such as books and ephemera), manuscript/archival materials (such as diaries or ledgers), audio/visual materials (such as recordings or films), artifacts (such as clothes or personal belongings), or born-digital materials (such as emails or digital photographs). Primary sources can be found in analog, digitized, and born-digital forms.
Primary sources can also include quantitative or qualitative data, anything that you directly analyze as first-hand evidence in support of a claim.
What are secondary sources?
Works synthesizing and/or commenting on primary and/or other secondary sources. Secondary sources, which are often works of scholarship, are differentiated from primary sources by the element of critical synthesis, analysis, or commentary.
