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What is a primary source? What is a secondary source?

Primary sources are typically original accounts of an event or time period (such as newspaper articles, speeches, photographs, and data sets) or works of literature (such as poems, memoirs, scripts, and novels).  

Secondary sources analyze, contextualize, interpret, or respond to primary sources. 

For instance, if you're working on a research paper for a class on gothic fiction, your primary source may be Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley. Your secondary sources would then likely include journal articles or chapters from edited collections that analyze Frankenstein. 

NOTE: "primary" and "secondary" are also used to distinguish types of research. In this case, "primary research" involves original data collected directly by the researcher, whereas "secondary research" involves reporting on or synthesizing existing data (such as in a literature review).