Skip to Main Content

Primary Sources: What are primary sources?

What Are Primary Sources?

Primary Sources - provide original ideas, participation in events, or direct observations of research/study. They can be historical documents written in the time period of the topic being researched. Examples include:

  • Historical documents written in the subject's time period
  • Novels, plays, poems, works of art
  • Diaries, autobiographies, speeches
  • Government documents
  • Original research (e.g. studies - often reported in scholarly articles)

Not All Scholarly Sources Are Primary Sources !

Scholarly and Primary Sources

About Primary Sources

Primary sources are the original data, images, or artifacts created at the time an event occurred, or soon after, by a participant in the events being studied.  Primary sources provide direct evidence about events, phenomena, or a person’s thoughts or actions.  Original creative works are also considered primary sources.

Primary sources can be books (or articles or reports) written by an author (or organization) using original concepts, such as:

or by a nonprofit organization such as New Jersey Education Association.

  • Government documents such as congressional hearings with testimony from ­­various participants, laws, agency reports, congressional committee reports or investigations.

  • Historical videos and documentaries

(Also, newspaper accounts of an event that just happened, maps, paintings and other artifacts, photographs, records such as patents, autobiographies, journals, diaries, narratives and oral histories.)

Description of a Scholarly Journal

Long articles, small print

Author is a subject expert –academic or clinical

Editor is a subject expert

Charts, graphs, statistical illustrations

Written for professionals, in technical language

Few, but targeted advertisements

Contains a bibliography and parenthetical references or footnotes

Often is peer-reviewed (or "refereed")

May be a primary source

Types of Scholarly Articles

Study – Describes a particular piece of research. Has a method section describing original research by the article’s author(s). It is a primary source.

Literature Review – Reviews the published works of other authors in relation to a specific topic.  Although, it may be a scholarly source, it is not a primary source.

Parts of an Scholarly Article

Multiple authors

Author’s credentials

Headnotes/Abstract 

Introduction (literature Review/ Background)

Body (Methods/methodology/Results)

Conclusion (Discussion)

References

Secondary Sources - analyze, describe, or restate information in primary resources or other secondary resources. Examples include:

  • Biographies
  • Review articles
  • Literature reviews
  • Historical studies

Tertiary Sources - provide overviews of topics by compiling information gathered from other resources. Examples include:

  • Encyclopedias
  • Dictionaries
  • Almanacs
  • Textbooks

 

UCNJ LibGuides at Union College