Primary sources are original materials on which other research is based. It includes documents such as poems, diaries, court records, interviews, surveys, and fieldwork. It also includes research results generated by experiments, which are published as journal articles in some fields of study. They are also sets of data, such as census statistics, which have been tabulated, but not interpreted.
Secondary sources describe or analyze the primary sources.
A few secondary sources are now available on the Web. Indexes and Abstracts serve to locate secondary and primary sources. An abstract is a summary of the work being cited. Many indexes and abstract are available now online. Any questions or comments about the content can be sent to the Instructional Web Pages Committee .