Use this guide to get help with APA citations and formatting: APA Citation Guide.
Use this guide to get help with MLA citations and formatting: MLA Citation Guide.
Primary Sources
Primary sources provide a firsthand account from a particular time period. These are original documents written by people who witnessed an event or lived at the same time. Good examples of primary resources include letters, diaries, court records, photographs, and interviews.
Secondary Sources
Secondary sources, on the other hand, offer an analysis of primary sources. Some secondary sources not only analyze primary sources but use them to argue a point or to persuade the reader to hold a certain opinion. Examples of secondary sources include dictionaries, encyclopedias, books, and journal articles.
For example, David McCullough’s biography, John Adams, is an example of a secondary source that explores the life of John Adams through the use of primary sources, including letters, diaries, contemporary newspaper articles, and other sources from the time period.
For more information on primary and secondary sources, watch this video:
Choosing the right topic is the key to research. If your topic is too big, or too broad, you'll find too many articles. If your topic is too narrow, you won't find enough information for your assignment.
Watch this video to learn more about how to brainstorm and create a research question and topic:
Keywords -- or search terms -- are the words you use to search in the library's databases. OneSearch and the library's databases will search for all the words you type into a search box. Instead of searching for a whole sentence or question, you need to break your topic down into keywords. You can mix and match different keywords to find different articles when you search.
Watch this video for more information:
