Writing with Style Writing and Style Manual Poway Unified School District

Primary and Secondary Sources

A primary source is an original source that gives information directly. That means that the information has not been summarized, interpreted, or explained by someone else. Primary source documents include personal interviews, surveys, experiments, and original-source documents like the Constitution, a novel, or an autobiography.

Examples of primary sources

Interview with a Holocaust survivor
Survey of students about their knowledge of the events of the Holocaust
WWII photographs or maps of concentration camps
Night by Elie Weisel (autobiography)

A secondary source is not an original source. It is removed from the original because someone has moved beyond the primary information by summarizing, analyzing, interpreting, or evaluating it. Secondary source documents include newspaper, magazine, encyclopedia, and journal articles, as well as documentaries, biographies, literary criticism, and websites.

Examples of secondary sources

Pamphlet from the Museum of Tolerance
CBS Documentary on the Holocaust
History textbook
Website: http://www.holocaustsurvivors.org

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Information Media

As you can see, both primary and secondary sources can be found in many different types of media. While much of your research will be conducted using books or computers, you may also want to consider some less traditional media, such as interviews, videotapes, maps, photographs, etc. See the section MLA Format for Bibliography Citations for how to cite these sources.

Computer Media

Researching on the Internet

A web directory (such as Yahoo) is a good place to start searching the internet. A web directory organizes related web sites into subject categories. For example, to find sites on the Constitution on Yahoo, you would select Government>Documents>Constitutions>United States.

A search engine (such as Google) will find specific key words within web pages. Many web directories have search engines built in to their systems. To use a search engine, follow the guidelines for keyword searching below.

Keyword searching

To search the Internet or a database by keyword, type in the important word or words you are looking for. Do not include articles, prepositions, or other small words. When searching by keyword, be as specific as possible. You might need to try several different terms in order to find useful information.

If you are looking for words in a particular order, for example, a phrase, title, or name, you should put the entire phrase in quotation marks. Remember that the search engine will look for EXACT matches for anything in quotation marks, so make sure that spelling and capitalization are correct.

If you type in several words in a keyword search, your results will often include pages that have only one of the words, not all. If you want all of the terms to appear in the results, then type AND or + between each word. If you want either of the words to appear, use OR.

If you want to exclude certain terms from your results, type NOT or – before the word you don’t want.

Once you find a useful site, some search engines have a “Find Similar Pages” option. You can also look on the site itself for other links to useful resources.

Evaluating Sources of Information

Many sources, particularly on the Internet, aren’t legitimate for research use. Some are out-of-date; others come from non-expert sources; still others are created for shock value.

Use the following checklist to evaluate the quality of the sources you’re using:

You can also evaluate websites by looking at the web address’s domain name.

By doing this you can determine what type of organization is sponsoring the website and maybe even predict potential bias before looking at the site. The best research sites are usually posted by universities, government agencies, and other reputable organizations, as opposed to individuals’ personal sites.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) http://www.icann.org/tlds has also designated the following domains:

RESEARCH AND WRITING