Email: libraries@colorado.edu
Purpose: Inform, entertain, opinion
Content: News, opinion, topical, short and long articles
Tone: Casual and accessible
Authors: Staff writers or journalists
Audience: Broad general audience
Review: Approval by editor
Keyword Strategies: Broad or specific, artifact or artifact's context
Purpose: Inform, entertain, opinion
Content: Current, brief, news, events, opinion
Tone: Casual and accessible
Authors: Staff writers or journalists
Audience: Broad general audience
Review: Approval by editor
Keyword Strategies: Specific, artifact or artifact's context
Purpose: Report original research
Content: Background, methods, results/data, analysis, conclusions of a research project
Tone: Formal and specialized
Authors: Researchers, professors, scholars
Audience: Academic
Review: Peer-reviewed by other researchers / experts
Keyword Strategies: Specific, artifact or artifact's context
Purpose: Inform
Content: News, trends, case studies, reviews
Tone: Understandable within profession
Authors: Staff writers or members of the profession
Audience: Targeted profession members
Review: Editor, professional associations
Keyword Strategies: Broad or specific, artifact or artifact's context
Purpose: Inform
Content: Background, broad overview, research, how-to
Tone: Formal and specialized
Authors: Scholars, specialists
Audience: Academic, professionals
Review: Approval by editor
Keyword Strategies: Broad, artifact or artifact's context
Purpose: Inform
Content: Background information, factual, data, statistics
Tone: Factual, technical
Authors: Scholars, specialists, writers, publishers
Audience: General audience
Review: Approval by editor
Keyword Strategies: Broad or specific, artifact or artifact's context
Purpose: Describe an innovation as a part of obtaining intellectual property protections. Allows a patent holder exclusive rights to making, using, importing and selling patented innovation.
Content: Technical information about the invention including description and drawings
Tone: Formal and technical
Authors: Inventors & innovators, individuals & companies
Audience: Engineers, designers, legal professionals, inventors, innovators
Review: Published patents have been approved by the patent office
Search Strategies: Inventor name, company, keywords, classification; artifact
Researchers conduct original research and then publish articles about their research in scholarly journals. Articles published in scholarly journals usually go through an anonymous peer review process. Researchers may also present their research at a professional conference and in this case they also write a paper that is peer reviewed and published in the proceedings of the conference.
Lets explore how the peer review process works using the video "Peer Review in 3 Minutes" by the the North Carolina State University Library.
Infographic by Jayashree Rajagopalan
Primary sources are original artifacts or documents. They are usually defined as first hand information that are communicated by witnesses or participants in past events. Primary sources are characterized not by their format but rather by the information they convey and their relationship to your research question.
Recommended Primary Source Databases:
Note, newspapers are often considered primary sources, so please also consider search tools and strategies mentioned above for finding newspaper primary sources relevant to your artifact.
