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Unit 4: Primary and Secondary Sources of Information

Primary

Primary information is straight from the horse's mouth,in other words it is original documents and raw data. It can be in any format, including written, visual, electronic or oral. It remains unchanged, for example autobiographies and diaries.

Secondary

Secondary information has been interpreted by somebody other than the originator, for example biographies.

In order to present a balanced, objective hypothesis it may sometimes be necessary to use a range of sources.

Sources for law students. The sources used when finding information in law can be different. Please contact your law librarian for more information.

Which of these lists (A or B) do you think contains the correctly defined sources?

Primary
Secondary
Primary
Secondary
patent editorial artefacts statistics
photograph literature review journal article photograph
artefacts textbook law report biography
parliamentary debates biography literature review parliamentary paper

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SMILE - Finding Information by Imperial College, Loughborough University and the University of Worcester, modified by Marion Kelt Glasgow Caledonian University is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License