Types of Sources

TJ Garden Book

When looking for information, the sources play an important role in legitimacy of a research project. There are three types of sources: primary, secondary, and tertiary.

Primary sources are first-hand pieces of information. For example Thomas Jefferson's garden book that kept records of his plants. His original garden plans or letters of gardening advice would be primary. Did he have figs?

A book about TJ's Garden Book

Secondary Sources are second-hand pieces of information. They review or report about the primary sources. An author who writes a book about TJ's garden, or TJ's garden book would be generating a secondary source. A newspaper who publishes an article about the contemporary TJ garden at Montecello today would be secondary source. Maybe the garden has figs today.

Seed catalogs have lists
of garden books

Tertiary Sources are lists of the sources...manuals, guidebooks, catalogs. A mail order catalog of all the gardening books available from a publisher would be a tertiary source because it would be a list. Different publishers would have different list of course.





Researchers try to get as close the primary source as possible.