Now that research paper-writing season is well underway, you may be hearing your professors discussing the need for primary sources as well as secondary sources. Sidney Silverman Library at Bergen Community College (NJ) offers a straightforward definition of the difference between primary and secondary sources. “Primary sources are original materials such as autobiographies, poems, diaries, documents, research articles, original data, or an original creation such as a piece of art.”  Materials that “describe, explain or interpret primary sources,” they explain, are secondary sources. “These include literature criticism, biographies, books about a topic, reviews, encyclopedias and dictionaries.” A well-written research paper includes a range of primary and secondary sources throughout in order to have a well-balanced collection of resources and facts. Learn how to distinguish between the two and discover some lesser known resources for each!

In Primary vs. Secondary, they also provide this useful checklist of examples:

Primary sources

• autobiography
• painting or object of art
• personal diary or letters
• treaty (government document)
• poem, novel, short story, etc.
• firsthand observer accounts of event
• play, film, television show, performance
• speech given by a person
• research report by researchers
• photographs

Secondary sources

• biography
• article reviewing or criticizing the art
• book about the person or event
• essay interpreting the document
• literary criticism of the work
• report on event years later
• biography of the writer
• commentary on the speech
• interpretation of the research
• explanation of photographs

Primary sources online

“Tens of thousands of archival collections can be found on the web,” says Leslie F. Stebbins. “These digitized primary resources provide researchers with unprecedented access to collections that previously were only available in one location and kept behind locked doors.” Also available online, notes the author of Student Guide to Research in the Digital Age: How to Locate and Evaluate Information Sources (Westport, CT: Libraries Unlimited, 2006), 68. are “information (which) indicates what is owned by a particular archive and…search aids that give a detailed inventory of the holdings of a particular collection and other descriptive information.”

In Find Digitized Primary Source Collections on the Web, Stebbins guides researchers to some larger online digital library collections, archival search engines and “tools that point to digitized and print collections,” and information on collections available outside the U.S.

And “If you have some flexibility with the topic you are working on,” the author suggests, “you might want to try one of the larger collections such as the American Memory Project. Locate an interesting collection and work backward to the development of your topic.”

Become a master of the primary and secondary resources, and you’ll have thoroughly researched term paper that both you and your professor can be happy with!

What is Media Literacy?

Media literacy is about more than how to use technology to acquire information. There are several definitions of media literacy but most concern the ability to employ critical thinking skills to evaluate information found online. This evaluation process involves asking questions about the choices involved in deciding what information is included and what is not included, the motives of the persons or institutions creating the information, and what results the creators of the information may have had in mind. In short, it is the development of the ability to question how and why the information was created.

It used to be enough to teach students how to spot stereotypes and propaganda but now the media literacy curriculum tends to include topics such as:

• Using search engines
• Creating websites
• Using social media networks

In her July 15, 2011 essay for the Journal of Media Literacy Education (JMLE) titled, “Essay: The Coming of Age of Media Literacy Education,” Vanessa Domine explained how the fast paced development of communications technologies broadened the scope of media literacy beyond print and digital texts to include other media such as games, blogs, and social networking.

Domine said, “As educators we must consistently widen the definition of technology to refer to ways of seeing the world and to be inclusive (rather than exclusive) in our uses of media forms and their associated devices. In other words, it is insufficient for media literacy educators to simply critique texts—we must lead the field through our own lived examples of technological proficiency.”

Survival Skill

The renewed interest in media literacy comes from the recognition that the public, especially the youth, are being bombarded daily by information from an increasing number of sources. Sifting through the information and discerning what is useful and valuable takes skill and practice.

In his 2007 article for The St. Louis Journalism Review titled, “Media Literacy: A Survival Skill,” Art Silverblatt explained how critical a skill it is. Silverblatt said, “Media literacy is a critical thinking skill that is applied to most of the information we receive: the channels of mass communication. We blindly accept the information that we receive through the media–often with disastrous results. We develop brand loyalties that have little to do with the quality of the product. We take the word (or pictures) of journalists to provide us with a clear understanding of our world. And we vote for candidates on the basis of ‘gut reactions’ to political spots devised by clever political media consultants.”

Media Literacy Crosses Content Areas

Teaching media literacy is not so much about how to use the technology as it is about learning to think about the technology and what part it plays in learning and culture. In his May 5, 2011 article for New Media Literacies titled, “Greening a Digital Media Course” Antonio Lopez explained how he combines the concepts of media literacy and ecology into a multicultural context.

Lopez said, “In addition to using the gadget as an object-to-think-with, I also like to use media samples, in particular advertising, as ways to explore media as ‘institutions-to-think-with.’ This reflects my bias of old school media literacy, which is to use media for the purpose of dialog about forms of culture and power. I’m somewhat nervous about how new multimedia literacy approaches are abandoning deconstruction skills for the sake of tool empowerment. I think it’s possible to have both.”

Media literacy education is largely concerned with teaching learners to move from passive receivers of information to active involvement in using and creating media for their own advantage and for the betterment of society.