Primary Sources
The literary work itself, such as a novel, poem, story, play, essay, or a collection of these works.
Secondary Sources
Research and scholarship about the primary source work, or about the author/creator of the primary source.
Articles and Books - your best option
Reference Works
Book Reviews
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Scholarly (peer-reviewed, academic) |
Non-scholarly (popular) |
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Author(s) |
Subject matter expert; often with advanced education (e.g., PhD) or working at a university |
Journalists, professional, or creative writers; may be crowd generated content |
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Verification |
Reviewed by an editorial board or other subject matter experts (peers) |
Reviewed by an editor (sometimes) |
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Audience & language |
Researchers, scholars, students; language is academic or technical |
General public; uses everyday, easy to understand language |
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Content |
Reports original research; builds on previous knowledge |
News, and practical information, creative works |
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Cites sources? |
Always cites other research |
Occasionally, but not required |
How do you know if you have a credible, reliable, relevant source? Consider the following:
Your resource doesn't necessarily have to meet all of these criteria.
The following video has more information about ways to understand and evaluate the credibility of sources.
Power up your searching with these tips.
Phrase searches: Put quotation marks around ideas made of multiple words (very useful for titles)
Truncation: Use an asterisk * to find different endings to your keywords
Synonyms: Use different keywords to describe the same/similar ideas to find results using any any of those terms. Note that synonyms are most effective in brackets with the word OR between them.
You can combine these techniques in a single search: Bronte "Wuthering Heights" gothic (weather OR environment*)
