Types of sources
You're looking for all three types of sources:
| Primary sources | Secondary sources | Tertiary sources | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What they are |
The things you're studying |
Analysis of the things you're studying |
Background information (overviews/summaries) |
| Examples |
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|
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| How they help you | They're what you're studying. Reading them or watching them is the first step to understanding them. | They tell you what other people think about your topic. | They introduce you to new concepts and help you find citable sources -- but are not themselves citable. |
Please make sure that your secondary sources are all scholarly analysis, not popular analysis! Here's the difference:
- SCHOLARLY sources are written for a narrow audience of scholars (experts who specialize in a certain field).
- POPULAR sources are written for a broad, general audience.
This video explains the difference in more detail:
Video credit: Carnegie Vincent Library at Lincoln Memorial University.
Reference Librarian
Other guides
Advice and recommendations for FSEMs in general, and for English research.
The Citing Resources guide gives you examples of perfectly-formatted citations. Zotero is a free app that keeps track of the sources you've found, and generates citations without any typing.