Information Literacy: Sources of Information

 An information source is a person, thing, or place from which information comes, arises, or is obtained. The information source can be a person, an article, a website,  a documentary, an organisation etc.. That source might then inform a person about something or provide knowledge about it. 

Information sources can be divided in to two broad categories

• Documentary Sources - published or recorded documents of knowledge
• Non-documentary sources - are not recorded or published. Include the information received from interacting with researchers, colleagues, consultants and various other sources like organisations.

Documentary sources are divided into separate distinct categories, primary, secondary, and tertiary

Primary sources

Primary sources are original materials where the research information are published first and on which other research is based. A primary source provides direct or firsthand evidence about an event, object, person, or work of art. 

Primary sources provide first hand and latest information on any topic. A subject becomes a discipline in its own right when independent primary sources begin to be produced in that area.

Primary sources include journal articles, historical and legal documents, eyewitness accounts, results of experiments, statistical data, pieces of creative writing, diary, manuscript, autobiography, research articles, audio and video recordings, speeches, art objects, or any other source of information that was created at the time under study. 

Examples:

• Literary creation: novels, short stories, poems, etc. 
• Artifacts (e.g. coins, plant specimens, fossils, furniture, tools, clothing, all from the time under study);
• Audio recordings (e.g. radio programs)
• Diaries;
• Internet communications on email, listservs;
• Interviews (e.g., oral histories, telephone, e-mail);
• Journal articles published in peer-reviewed publications;
• Letters;
• Newspaper articles written at the time;
• Original Documents (i.e. birth certificate, will, marriage license, trial transcript);
• Patents;
• Photographs
• Proceedings of Meetings, conferences and symposia;
• Records of organizations, government agencies (e.g. annual report, treaty, constitution, government document);
• Speeches;
• Survey Research (e.g., market surveys, public opinion polls);
• Video recordings (e.g. television programs);
• Works of art, architecture, literature, and music (e.g., paintings, sculptures, musical scores, buildings, novels, poems).
• Web site.

Secondary Sources

Secondary sources are interpretations or evaluations of primary sources. They describe, discuss, interpret, comment upon, analyze, evaluate, summarize, and process primary sources. Secondary source materials can be articles in newspapers or popular magazines, book or movie reviews, or articles found in scholarly journals that discuss or evaluate someone else's original research.

The secondary sources provide digested information and serve as a pointer to the primary source of information.

Examples include:

• Bibliographies (also considered tertiary);
• Biographical works;
• Commentaries, criticisms;
• Dictionaries, Encyclopedias (also considered tertiary);
• Histories;
• Literary criticism such as Journal articles;
• Magazine and newspaper articles;
• Monographs, other than fiction and autobiography;
• Textbooks (also considered tertiary);
• Web site (also considered primary).

Tertiary Sources

Tertiary sources contain information that has been compiled from primary and secondary sources. Secondary and tertiary sources of information is rather Tertiary sources include almanacs, chronologies, dictionaries and encyclopedias, directories, guidebooks, indexes, abstracts, manuals, and textbooks.

Examples:

• Almanacs;
• Bibliographies (also considered secondary);
• Chronologies;
• Dictionaries and Encyclopedias (also considered secondary);
• Directories;
• Fact books;
• Guidebooks;
• Indexes, abstracts, bibliographies used to locate primary and secondary sources;
• Manuals;
• Textbooks (also be secondary).