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SOC 2301: Intro to Sociology

This is a guide to library resources in the SOC 2301: Intro to Sociology course. Here you will find databases, electronic journals, tutorials, and other information.

Primary Source Overview

  • A primary source is a record of a person, event, or occurrence created by an eyewitness or a participant's version of an event. Primary sources allow researchers to gain better insight into historical figures and events.
     
  • Primary sources emphasize the lack of intermediaries between the things or events being studied and reports of those things or events based on the belief that firsthand accounts are more accurate.
     
  • Examples of primary sources include diaries, letters, notes from lab experiments, photographs, blogs, e-mails, maps, scrapbooks, Facebook pages, poetry, artwork, birthday cards, office records, and artifacts.

Primary Sources for Sociology

Primary sources relating to sociology often include articles describing research and/or experiment results, ethnographies, interviews, surveys, and data sets.

Tip: When search for primary source material, look for certain words to appear in the article's abstract. Words such as "study", "method", "find", and "results" will generally point you in the right direction that the article presents primary source material.