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JSK - Upper Primary Research Toolkit: Primary and Secondary Sources

What are sources?

What are sources?

Sources are all the places you get information for your research.  For example:

  • books
  • websites
  • people

Citing sources means listing all the places you found information. 

It is important to cite your sources because it:

  • gives credit to the person who originally created the work
  • allows others to look up the source to learn more
  • helps you avoid plagiarism 

Your teachers will give you more information on how to cite your sources in a bibliography.

Primary and Secondary Sources

What are primary and secondary sources?

Primary sources are original materials.  For example:

  • interviews with people
  • diary entries
  • photographs
  • artefacts (objects)

Secondary sources do not contain original material.  They describe primary sources.  For example:

  • textbooks
  • biographies
  • encyclopaedias

Read more about the difference between primary and secondary sources here.

How to Conduct an Interview

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