Is it a Primary or Secondary Source?
| Subject | Primary | Secondary |
|---|---|---|
| Art and Architecture | Painting by Georgia O'Keefe | Article critiquing art piece |
| Physical/Life Sciences | Jane Goodall's Autobiography | Meg Greene's: Jane Goodall: a Biography |
| Engineering/Physical Sciences | Patent | NTIS database |
| Humanities | Letters by Martin Luther King, Jr | Web site on King's writings |
| Social Sciences | Notes taken by clinical psychologist | Magazine article about the psychological condition |
| Performing Arts | Movie filmed in 1942 | Biography of the director |
This collection includes the digitized copies of 20-year runs of a half-dozen 18th and 19 century journals - Gentleman's Magazine, The Annual Register, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, Notes and Queries, The Builder, and Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine.
This digital collection from The British Library features access to digitized copies of a diverse selection of historic texts, from the first Atlas of Europe to a 15th Century church missal and the early writings of Jane Austen, among others.
Project Gutenberg offers over 40,000 free ebooks
Types of Secondary Sources
As you conduct literary research, be sure to ask your instructor what type of information they are looking for you to use to support your arguments and analysis. Are you to use scholarly, research-based articles? Trade or general readership sources/sites? What about primary sources? The chart below analyzes the different types of secondary research/sources.
