PRIMARY SOURCES
Sometimes, in your quest for knowledge you will be asked to consult “primary sources.” This is academic lingo for “first-hand information.” Primary sources are the actual documents or sources on which interpretation and analysis is based. Things like diaries, letters, government documents, literature, interviews, meeting minutes, and photographs can all be primary sources. Secondary sources are ones where someone has interpreted, retold, or analyzed primary sources. Primary sources are the “evidence” used in secondary sources. Below are the general ways to cite the information that students find Primary Sources from; in a book (or anthology) or from a website.
BOOK
Author Last Name, First Name. Title. In Title of Collection, edited by Editor First Name Last Name, translated by Translator First Name Last Name, year. Place of Publication: Publisher, Publication Date.
WEBSITE
Author Last Name, First Name. Title of Text. Translated by Translator First Name Last Name. Title of Website. Accessed Month Day,Year. URL.
There is a second step if there is additional information about the primary source and that is to include as much of the publication information as possible (this is not always possible).
Example Citations of a Primary Source taken from a Secondary Source
Author of primary source First Name Last Name, Publication information for original source, page number(s), quoted in Author of secondary source, Publication information for secondary source, page number(s).
Some Examples of This:
SPEECH
British Foreign Office, FO371, FO Minute, 30 March 1943, A3068/4/2. Vol 22507, quoted in Bryce Wood, Dismantling the Good Neighbor Policy, (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1985), 18.
INTERVIEW
Le Minh Huy, interview by author, personal interview through translator, Ho Chi Minh City, Viet Nam, 21 November 2001.
Isaac Bahevis Singer, interview by Harold Flender, in Writers at Work: The “Paris Review” Interviews, ed. George Phimpton, 5th ser. (New York: Viking Press, 1981), 85.
PUBLIC ADDRESS
Franklin D. Roosevelt, “We Americans Have Cleared Our Decks and Taken Our Battle Stations,” Navy and Total Defense Day Address, 27 October 1941, in The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Samuel Rosenman, ed., comp., 1941 Volume: The Call To Battle Stations (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1950), 439.
For further information on citing primary sources please visit the Library of Congress' website, which provides citation guidelines for Chicago, MLA, and APA. Click here.