Is a dictionary a primary source

Primary Sources are materials that contain direct evidence, first-hand testimony, or an eyewitness account of a topic or event under investigation. They can be published or unpublished items in any format (the original or a surrogate format such as a photocopy, a digital copy, a printed edition, or a microfilm edition), from handwritten letters, to objects, to the built environment.

Secondary Sources are works that analyze and interpret other sources. They use primary sources to solve research problems.

Primary vs. Secondary - The way you engage with a source determines whether it is a primary or secondary source for your project. Book reviews, for example, are typically considered secondary sources.  If the subject of your research is book reviews themselves, however, they would be primary sources for your project.

Sources:  The Craft of Research by Wayne C. Booth, Gregory G. Colomb, Joseph M. Williams. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, c2008; Introduction to Archival Terminology, NARA.

Is a biography a primary source? Good question.

When writing for an audience, adding relevant quotes, excerpts, and data provides credibility to your work. Primary sources reign supreme because information that comes from the original source leaves little room for error. In our digital age, where so much information is repeated from website to website, it’s easy for data to be mistyped, quotes to be misattributed, and information to just be wrong.

It’s similar to the group game, Telephone, that kids play. One person starts the game by whispering a phrase into the person’s ear next to them. The phrase is repeated until it gets to the last person who says the phrase out loud to see if the message changed. When I played it as a little girl, the phrase hardly ever came out like the original. We run the same risk when we copy statistics or information from random websites that aren’t the primary or original source.

In the first half of this article, we’ll answer the question, 

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