If you are doing the interpretation of the source, it's a primary source. Source types that are ripe for interpretation include the types of sources we generally include in list of example primary sources: datasets, statutes, interviews, social media posts, government documents, advertisements, and more. These sources allow you interpret them as they are relevant and useful to your research, making them a primary source.
If someone else is doing/has done the interpretation of the source, it's a secondary source. Source types that fit into this category most often include books, scholarly articles, and news articles (though news articles can be primary or secondary, depending on how they're used). From a legal perspective, secondary sources include law reviews and journals. A secondary source analyzes or interprets a primary source.
Please note that these links/sources are just places to *begin* searching for primary sources. It is not an exhaustive list by any means!
This link opens in a new windowThe links below go directly to the Purdue OWL pages for APA and Chicago citation styles. Follow the links on the left to navigate to pages showing examples for various source types.
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Land Acknowledgment: The University of Washington Bothell & Cascadia College Campus Library occupies Land that has been inhabited by Indigenous Peoples since time immemorial. Specifically, this campus is located on Sammamish Land from which settler colonists forcibly removed Coast Salish Peoples to reservations in the mid-19th century. Today, descendants of the Sammamish are members of several Coast Salish communities.