Primary sources are original artifacts or documents. They offer firsthand accounts from the given author or individuals directly involved in an event.

Diaries and literary memoirs
Letters/ Correspondence
Visual Artistic works (photographs, paintings, sculptures, cartoons, etc.)
Written Artistic works (poems, songs, music, etc. )
News segments/transcripts
Speeches
Interviews
Editorials
Legal documents and Statistics (Government records)

Secondary sources are documents written after an event has occurred, providing secondhand accounts of that event, person, or topic. Unlike primary sources, which provide first-hand accounts, secondary sources offer different perspectives, analysis, and conclusions of those accounts.

Journal, news, and magazine articles
News reports
Encyclopedias
Textbooks
Books

Tertiary Sources provide overviews of topics gathered from other primary and secondary resources. Another clue is that secondary sources are almost always written by experts, but tertiary sources may be written by staff writers who have an interest in the topic but are not scholars on the subject. Many tertiary sources could be considered secondary sources.

Dictionaries
Encyclopedia
Almanac
Bibliographies
Chronologies
Directories
Fact books
Guidebooks
Manuals
Textbooks

From University Library of UIUC

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