Often a good research paper will be made up of a combination of primary, secondary, and tertiary sources.
 

• Primary sources are uninterpreted, raw data.
   
• Secondary sources are materials in which the information from primary sources has been analyzed or interpreted.
   
• Tertiary sources are materials in which the information from secondary sources has been "digested" -- no, not eaten -- reformatted and condensed, to put it into a convenient form.
   

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revised November 8, 2007