However, students must remember that the Internet is not carefully and rigorously reviewed the way that books and articles are. Therefore, to make the best use of the amazing resources available through the Internet, students must learn to search effectively and judge the worth of resulting information. Primary sources are direct or firsthand sources of information. These sources can be letters, memoirs, newspaper accounts of an event, official records or histories, or a person's own writings or texts. In science, primary material also refers to data gathered by direct observation or experimentation.
Secondary sources are interpretive information derived from primary material.
These sources can be be biographies, journal or magazine articles, histories, or newspaper articles that are not firsthand accounts. Just as there are criteria to evaluate cars or running shoes, there are standards to measure the quality of information. These standards, or evaluation criteria, give researchers guidance in selecting information that is appropriate and worthwhile to the topic. Measuring each source against these five standards will help assure that information used in a research project is appropriate to the project. Scholarly sources are carefully reviewed by other experts before publication to assure accuracy and reliability.