LSU Libraries - Evaluation of Information Sources Tutorial - Part I, Types of Information Sources

CONTENTS:

Introduction
Primary Sources
Secondary Sources
Popular vs. Scholarly

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Part II, Evaluation Criteria

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Popular vs. Scholarly:

This sounds very straight forward, and usually is, but sometimes things do fall into both categories. National Geographic Magazine is one such entity. It is written for a general audience, has lots of nice pictures, is widely available and fairly inexpensive, but the articles are very well researched by experts in the field, and usually do have extensive references with the content. It is a scholarly publication, but is easily accessible to a popular audience. Another example is Highlights Magazine. It is written by educators and experts in the field of education and children, but is intended for use by children and parents. While it would be considered a popular resource, it does have characteristics of a scholarly resource.

Review Questions:

You come across an article entitled "Characteristics of adolescents with anorexia nervosa" in a medical journal. It is written by a psychiatrist who specializes in eating disorders. The article is 32 pages long, includes an extensive bibliography, as well as several graphs depicting research results. What type of source is this? You come across an article entitled "Adolescents with anorexia" in a newspaper. It is written by a staff reporter for the paper. Included in the science section of the paper, the article is only half a column long, and gives a broad overview of the topic, in very plain language. There are no references to experts or cited works. This is an example of what type of source?

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