Primary & Secondary Sources
Primary sources include original content, first-hand accounts, raw data, documents or objects created at the time of study. Primary sources vary dependent upon the focus of study.
For example, primary sources for a historian will include diaries, letters, newspaper article written at the time of an event; for a literary scholar, she may study a poem, a short story, or novel; for a musicologist, she may study notes written by the composer; for a biologist, she will study the findings of an original research project.
Secondary sources interpret or analyze a primary source. A secondary source provides commentary and discussion of a primary source.
For example, a magazine article that discusses a research study that analyzed data collected from a survey about literacy in rural school districts.
The following video was produced for University of West Florida Library; it contains useful information about primary and secondary sources:
Magazines through the Catalog and Databases
- Academic Search Premier This link opens in a new window
Broad database with both academic and general articles. Many are full text, but some are citation only.
- ProQuest Meta-search This link opens in a new window
Search across the ProQuest databases, including American Periodicals, GeoRef, ERIC, U.S. Newsstream, Nursing & Allied Heath. Materials Science & Engineering Collection, and Sociological Abstracts.
See a complete list of Proquest Databases at Krueger Library.
- History Commons This link opens in a new window
Access content such as Godey's Lady's Book 1830-1885, The Civil War: A Newspaper Perspective (November 1860-April 1865), which includes the Charleston Mercury, the New York Herald, and the Richmond Enquirer, and African American Newspapers (19th century).
- Readers' Guide Retrospective: 1890-1982 This link opens in a new window
Comprehensive list of articles in the most popular general interest periodicals published in the U.S. and Canada. Some full text.
- Flipster This link opens in a new window
A collection of digital magazines, including The Atlantic, Time, Diverse: Issues in Higher Education, Bloomberg Businessweek, The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, Newsweek, Columbia Journalism Review, Ebony, Forbes, the National Review, and more.
Flipster is available through WSU Apps. You need to use a web browser to download issues into the app to read them. Additional information is available in our Flipster Guide.
To find more popular magazines accessible through the library, you can search our Periodicals holdings.
Below you will find a beginner list of relevant periodicals in the library catalog.
- BitchCurrent Issues of this magazine (from 2016) can be downloaded to a mobile device through this library database.
- CosmopolitanAvailable from 1996 to present. Note that images are not available.
- Godey's Lady's BookAvailable from 1840 to 1989.
- Good HousekeepingAvailable from 1971 until present.
- Harper's BazaarAvailable from 1867 until 1912; 1999 to present.
- MademoiselleAvailable from 1970 until 1994
- McCall'sAvailable from 1960 until 1995
- Ms.Available from 1976 until Present
- Parents' MagazineAvailable from 1932 until 1995
- RedbookAvailable from 1996 to 2018.
- ShapeAvailable from 2002 until Present
- Vanity FairAvailable from 1859-1863, 1983 to 1995, 2003 until Present
- Working WomanAvailable from 1981 until 2001
Internet Archive/Wayback Machine
Can't find a copy of a popular magazine published on the internet? Try looking at the Internet Archive/Wayback Machine.
