Purpose: Often, secondary materials serve to help interpret or critique an event. A journal article that summarizes research on a certain topic without reporting on original research would be secondary while the original research is primary.

Discipline: Primary and Secondary Materials will differ depending on the discipline. Consult your professor or departmental library liaison for more assistance.

 

	Primary	Secondary	Tertiary
Definitions	Sources that contain raw, original, uninterpreted and unevaluated information.	Sources that digest, analyze, evaluate and interpret the information contained within primary sources. They tend to be argumentative.	Sources that compile, analyze, and digest secondary sources. They tend to be factual.
Timing of Publication Cycle	Primary sources tend to come first in the publication cycle.	Secondary sources tend to come second in the publication cycle.	Tertiary sources tend to come last in the publication cycle.
Formats--depends on the kind of analysis being conducted.	Often newspapers, weekly and monthly-produced magazines; letters, diaries.	Often scholarly periodicals and books. (Professors like these.)	Often reference books.
Example: Historian (studying the Vietnam War)	Newspaper articles, weekly news magazines, monthly magazines, diaries, correspondence, diplomatic records.	Articles in scholarly journals analyzing the war, possibly footnoting primary documents; books analyzing the war.	Sample Title: Historical Dictionary of Vietnam
Example: Literary Critic (studying the literature of the Vietnam War)	Novels, poems, plays, diaries, correspondence.	Articles in scholarly journals analyzing the literature; books analyzing the literature; formal biographies of writers of the war.	Sample Title: Writing About Vietnam; A Bibliography of the Literature of the Vietnam Conflict
Example: Psychologist (studying the effects of the Vietnam syndrome)	Article in a journal that reports research and its methodology; notes taken by a clinical psychologist.	Articles in scholarly publications synthesizing results of original research; books analyzing results of original research.	Sample Title: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
Example: Scientist (studying Agent Orange exposure)	Article in a journal reporting research and methodology.	Articles in scholarly publications synthesizing results of original research; books doing same.	Sample Title: Agent Orange and Vietnam: An Annotated Bibliography

Primary: vietnamese conflict 1961-1975 personal narratives
Secondary: vietnamese conflict 1961-1975 public opinion
Tertiary: vietnamese conflict 1961-1975 dictionaries

Primary	Secondary	Tertiary
biography (only if it's on an autobiographical record) cases correspondence description and travel diaries fiction interview personal narrative pictorial works poetry short stories sources	biography (only if it's describing a biography--not an autobiography) criticism and interpretation history history and criticism government policy law and legislation moral and ethical aspects political aspects politics and government psychological aspects public opinion religion religious aspects social policy study and teaching	abstracts bibliography bio-bibliography chronology classification dictionaries dictionaries and encyclopedias directories encyclopedias guidebooks handbooks, manuals, etc. identification indexes registers statistics tables index