The English Corner at Richland College
Types of Sources
When writing a research paper, you need to integrate sources to support your position. There are
three types of sources: primary, secondary, and tertiary. You need to know the difference
between the types of sources in order to know which ones are acceptable for use in your essay.
Primary Sources
Primary sources are raw data. They are original works or data from experiments or surveys.
Primary sources are not yet interpreted or analyzed. If possible, primary sources should be the
bulk of the sources used in your research as you then have the opportunity to analyze or interpret
them yourself. The following are examples of primary sources:
legal documents, historical documents, interviews, lab/field experiments, survey/polls,
films, artifacts, visual arts, music/songs, diaries, letters, speeches/interviews, government
documents, and literary works including plays, poems, fiction, and nonfiction.
Secondary Sources
Secondary sources are interpretations or analyses of primary information. Secondary sources are
another author’s analysis of a primary source. Secondary sources are the most common type of
source. You read secondary sources to find out what other experts are discussing about your
topic. Secondary sources situate your topic in the academic conversation. The following are
examples of secondary sources:
book reviews, movie reviews, scholarly books and articles, critiques, biographies,
scientific reviews, and textbooks.
Indirect Sources
Indirect sources are a subset of secondary sources. An indirect source is information taken from
one source that is found in another source. An indirect source is second hand. Avoid indirect
sources if possible; alternatively, try to find the original source and quote from it instead.
Sometimes, you cannot find or have access to the original source. In these cases, it is acceptable
to use an indirect source. Indirect sources are cited differently than primary or secondary sources.
See the handout over MLA citation for more help with citing. The following are examples of
indirect sources:
someone else’s words printed in another author’s publication; interviews, quotes, and/or
videos contained in news reports that cannot be obtained anywhere else
Handout created by Justine White & Jane Stidham
www.richlandcollege.edu/englishcorner
Tertiary Sources
A tertiary source is general information or information intended for the general public and not
scholarly. Tertiary sources are used for gathering information about a topic. They give you an
overview of the topic, so you can learn more about it before you begin researching or writing.
The following are examples of tertiary sources:
annotated bibliographies, dot-com websites, and reference books written for the general
public
Dictionaries and encyclopedias are also considered tertiary sources unless they are used to
address specific scholarly information. Only then can they be considered citable secondary
sources. For example, scholars rely on The Oxford English Dictionary to verify the derivation of
English words.
In order to have the best research for a paper, you should use both primary and secondary
sources to have a balanced representation of the topic. If you only use secondary sources, it
appears that you are only regurgitating others’ opinions with no unique position of your own.
Handout created by Justine White & Jane Stidham
www.richlandcollege.edu/englishcorner