Diagram that explains Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary Sources, as well as how they relate to Publishing and Research.
Primary sources are materials that document the event when it happened—or as close to when it happened as possible.
Examples include:
News: newspapers, magazines, blogs, social media
Government publications and official documents
First person accounts: diaries, letters, oral histories, blogs, social media…
For further information on Government Information as a primary source, check out the page of this guide titled, "Finding Government Information" from the tabs at the top of the guide.
As a teaser, here's the link to the National Archives (US):
A finding aid is essentially an inventory of the contents of a manuscript or archival collection.A finding aid will provide an overview of the collection, some background information, and a list of the contents of the collection - sometimes only at a very general level. In most cases, finding aids do not list each item contained within the collection, but rather identify the given names of boxes or folders of materials. The onus is on the researcher to suss out which sections of the collections may be worth investigating more closely, and then arrange a visit to the collection for in depth researhch, and/or correspond with a librarian or archivist regarding reproductions.
