A collection of sources on Southern history, literature and culture from the colonial period through the first decades of the twentieth century. Consists of thematic collections of books, diaries, posters, artifacts, letters, oral history interviews, and songs. Includes browse indexes for authors, titles, subjects and geographic names as well as K-12 classroom exercises and sample lesson plans based on sources in the collections.
Open source archive which "aims to provide free access to eleven integrated and scientifically elaborated collections produced by the three humanistic Institutes of the National Hellenic Foundation for Research - Institute of Greek and Roman Antiquity, Institute of Byzantine Research, Institute of Neohellenic Research."
In Custodia Legis is Latin for “in the custody of the law,” a nod to the fact that the Law Library of Congress is a custodian of law and legislation for both the nation and the world. Legal resources are divided into two broad categories: primary and secondary sources. Primary legal resources are statements of the law from a court in the form of an opinion or a law passed by Congress or a state legislature. Secondary legal resources provide an analysis or commentary on primary law. These resources also help users locate and understand the primary law sources. Secondary legal sources may also influence legal decisions but they do not have a controlling or binding authority like the primary sources of law. There are a variety of secondary sources available to researchers of U.S. law. These include: legal dictionaries and encyclopedias; annotated law reports; legal periodicals; legal treatises and nutshells; Restatements; loose-leaf services; and legal directories. The Law Library of Congress has an extensive collection of legal treatises and other commentaries that can be located through the Library of Congress’s online catalog.
| Discipline | Primary Source Examples | Secondary Source Examples |
| History |
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| Art & Literature |
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| Communications & Journalism |
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| Political Science |
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| Science & Social Science |
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Primary sources are first-hand evidence related to the time or event you are investigating. This includes accounts by participants or observers and a wide range of written, physical, audio or visual materials created at the time or later by someone with direct experience.
In the sciences and social sciences, primary sources or 'primary research' are original research experiments, studies, or observations written about by the researchers themselves.
If a primary source is direct first-hand evidence, then a secondary source is second-hand commentary including anything that investigates, comments on, brings together, or reviews those primary sources and other secondary sources.
What makes a source primary or secondary depends a lot on the questions you are researching, the context, and the discipline (subject). The same type of source might be primary for one use or discipline and secondary in another.
Documentaries: When studying history, a documentary about the Vietnam War is a secondary source because it brings together many primary sources about the war and makes an argument about them. In contrast, in the field of journalism, a documentary that investigates current political corruption would be a primary source because it involves original investigation.
Newspaper Articles: A newspaper article discussing a speech by the Speaker of the House would typically be a second-hand account of that speech (the primary source) and therefore the article is a secondary source. However, if we want to know how the media portrayed the Speaker of the House, or if the speech was so long ago the newspaper article is the only evidence left, it becomes a primary source.
Commentary or Criticism: A review of a movie is typically a secondary source commenting on the film itself. However, if you are researching the critical reception of a film that review would become a primary source.
Portions of this page were adapted from Scribbr.com "Primary and secondary sources"