Narrator: In university, you’ll be asked to use sources to back up your points of view and perspectives, to prove an argument, or use sources as objects of reflection to show your understanding. There are different types of sources available and different ways to interpret and use them in your work. This video will show you how.

Primary sources are immediate, first-hand accounts on a particular topic. Primary sources often contain an author’s own account on a specific topic or event. Primary sources can also include the direct result of an experiment or phenomenon. For example, diaries, speeches, letters, interviews, audio or video recordings are considered primary sources, as are raw data from a scientific experiment or survey.

You’ll often have to analyze primary sources as evidence for a particular argument. For example, you may need to analyze a series of letters and diary entries in a history class to point to a specific historical phenomenon that you’ve observed; alternatively, you may have to analyze survey results to assess whether there is a relationship between participants and their answers.

You’ll need to support your primary sources with secondary sources. Secondary sources describe, summarize, or discuss information derived from primary sources. Secondary sources offer a layer of interpretation and analysis that is critical for your assignments, because you’ll need to contextualize your work by drawing from other experts working on this topic. For example, books, scholarly articles, and conference proceedings are considered secondary sources.

While you’ll analyze primary sources, you’ll have to rely on secondary sources to contextualize your efforts. For example, you’ll want to use secondary sources, such as a chapter in a textbook on research methods, to describe the technique that you applied in analyzing your survey results. Alternatively, you may want to explain how other scholars have analyzed a particular film by including their scholarly articles and books in your literature review.

Here’s a final example to illustrate this point:

For your essay on Plato’s The Republic, you’re asked to include one primary source and two secondary sources. Your copy of Plato’s The Republic is your primary source, because it is the main account that you’ll be analyzing. Using the Library, you find a peer-reviewed journal article and a book chapter that also interpret Plato’s The Republic; these are your secondary sources. You’ll cite them in your essay, using them to support or contextualize your analysis.

It can be really frustrating working with all the different types of information out there. If you ever need a helping hand just reach out to a librarian. We’re here to help.