literary of sources

American Literature: A Guide to Resources: Primary Sources

• Annual Surveys of Research
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• Biographical Sources
• Explication Sources
• Literary Terms and Concepts
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Primary Source Databases in US Literature and History

The Library provides networked access to many more full-text, primary source databases than can be listed here. Others may be located through the Library Catalog and Databases , which contains an alphabetical list of online resources related to Linguistics, Language and Literature. Also, see the Theater subject guide for information on Asian-American Drama , Black Drama , and North American Women's Drama .

• Eight Centuries Formerly known as 19th Century Masterfile. Searchable index to a variety of 19th century Anglo-American periodical articles, documents and other primary and secondary sources published before 1930. Many links to full text. Aggregates indexes to books, periodicals, newspapers, government documents and patents into a single resource.
• African-American Women Writers of the 19th Century "...a digital collection of some 52 published works by 19th-century black women writers. A part of the Digital Schomburg, this collection provides access to the thought, perspectives and creative abilities of black women as captured in books and pamphlets published prior to 1920. A full text database of these 19th and early 20th- century titles, this digital library is key-word-searchable." - Schomburg Center, NYPL.
• America's Historical Newspapers We have access to Ser.1, 1690-1876, Ser. 2, 1758-1900, Ser. 3, 1829-1922, (19th- and 20th-century newspapers including Civil War, Reconstruction, the Progressive Era and beyond), and Ser. 6 includes more than 160 significant 18th-, 19th- and 20th-century newspapers, African American Newspapers, 1827-1998, includes newspapers published in the 19th and 20th centuries.
• American Memory Provides information on, and access to, the digitized version of the National Digital Library's primary-source collections on American history and culture, including photographs, documents, sound recordings, and motion pictures. Broad topics covered include: agriculture, arts and architecture, history, performing arts, social sciences, etc. Particular collections include: African-American perspectives, Alexander Graham Bell papers, Baseball cards, Civil War photographs, Early motion pictures, and Voices from the Dust Bowl.
• American Periodicals American Periodicals includes two full text resources: American Periodicals Series Online (APS Online) and American Periodicals from the Center for Research Libraries. Both contain digitized images of American special interest and general magazines, labor and trade publications, scientific and literary journals, and photographic periodicals, as well as other historically significant titles, from the 19th century through the dawn of the 20th century. Because the database contains digitized images of periodical pages, researchers can see all of the original typography, drawings, graphic elements, and article layouts exactly as they were originally published.
• Brown University Women Writers Project "The mission of the Brown University Women Writers Project is to create, develop, and make accessible a state-of-the-art electronic textbase of women's writing in English before 1830. The WWP textbase is intended to support a wide range of activities, including new research on texts, information technology, and cultural history; publications and other textbase products; and innovative approaches to teaching."--Title screen
• Columbia Granger's World of Poetry Indexes poetry in published anthologies. Contains full text of anthologized poems in the public domain, poetry excerpts from copyrighted works, and citations providing poem title, author, publisher, subject(s), and a list of anthologies in which the selected poem appears. 15,000 authors are represented with references to 558 separate anthologies (1992 release). Also contains audio readings of canonical works, and allows side-by-side comparison of texts.
• Early American Imprints, 1639-1800 Online version of the microfiche set Early American imprints, 1639-1800, based on the renowned American bibliography by Charles Evans and enhanced by Roger Bristol's Supplement to Evans' American bibliography. Serves as the foundation for research on every aspect of 17th and 18th century American life. Upon completion, Evans Digital will consist of over 36,000 works and 2,400,000 images.
• Early Encounters in North America Assembled from hundreds of primary sources, documents the relationships among peoples and with the environment in North America from 1534 to 1850, this collection focuses on personal accounts and provides unique perspectives from all of the protagonists, including traders, slaves, missionaries, explorers, soldiers, native peoples, and officials, both men and women. It includes works by American Indians as well as a wide range of Europeans. It captures first impressions, records hundreds of years of observations of flora and fauna, describes encounters with native peoples presents a new literature with words and metaphors created in response to new places, and much more. The database includes prints, drawings, paintings, maps, bibliographies, letters, photographs, and original facsimile pages all searchable by standardized vocabulary.
• Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) ECCO is a comprehensive digital edition of The Eighteenth Century microfilm set, which has aimed to include every significant English-language and foreign-language title printed in the United Kingdom, along with thousands of important works from the Americas, between 1701 and 1800. Consists of books, pamphlets, broadsides, ephemera. Subject categories include history and geography; fine arts and social sciences; medicine, science, and technology; literature and language; religion and philosophy; law; general reference. Also included are significant collections of women writers of the eighteenth century, collections on the French Revolution, and numerous eighteenth-century editions of the works of Shakespeare. Where they add scholarly value or contain important differences, multiple editions of each individual work are offered.
• Latino Literature: Poetry, Drama and Fiction This link opens in a new window "Latino Literature brings together more than 100,000 pages pages of poetry, fiction, and over 450 plays written in English and Spanish by hundreds of Chicano, Cuban, Puerto Rican, Dominican, and other Latino authors working in the United States. Among the gems of the collection are nearly 800 items (poems, novels, and plays) that have never been published before. Researchers will also find numerous Chicano folk tales and audio files of selected poems and plays. It contains over 133,465 pages." (Homepage, viewed April 3, 2014)
• ProQuest One Literature Former name: Literature Online. Offers a full-text collection of poetry, drama, and prose with complementary references sources as well as articles, monographs and dissertations from the Annual bibliography of English language and literature (ABELL); full-text articles from literary journals; and biographical information on widely studied authors.
• Making of America (MOA) Digital versions of selections from Cornell University Library's collection. Features monograph volumes and journal articles published in the nineteenth century. Focuses on the major journal literature of the period, ranging from general interest publications to those with more targeted audiences such as agriculture.
• Modernist Journals Project A digital archive of English-language literary periodicals published between 1890 and 1922, such as Coterie, The Egoist, Others, The Smart Set, and more. It is a joint project of Brown University and the University of Tulsa.
• North American Slave Narratives Contains full text of "books and articles that document the individual and collective story of African Americans struggling for freedom and human rights in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries. This collection includes all the existing autobiographical narratives of fugitive and former slaves published as broadsides, pamphlets, or books in English up to 1920. Also included are many of the biographies of fugitive and former slaves and some significant fictionalized slave narratives published in English before 1920."
• Popular Culture in Britain and America 1950-1975. Popular Culture explores the dynamic period of social, political and cultural change between 1950 and 1975. The resource offers thousands of colour images of manuscript and rare printed material as well as photographs, ephemera and memorabilia from this exciting period in our recent history.
• Samuel J. May Anti-slavery Collection Searchable digital collection of pamphlets and leaflets donated to Cornell by abolitionist and humanitarian Samuel J. May. Covers the anti-slavery struggle at local, regional, national, and international levels during the ante-bellum and Civil War periods in America.
• Wright American Fiction, 1851-1875 "A collection of 19th century American fiction, as listed in Lyle Wright's bibliography American Fiction, 1851-1875. There are currently 2887 texts included (1,883 unedited, 1,004 fully edited and encoded) by 1,450 authors"--Title screen.

Digital Book Archives

Early Imprints

For more information on pre-1800 primary sources, see the guide Locating Pre-1800 Imprints, British & American

Rare Books & Mss.

That book you're reading doesn't end with the last page. It may have a long and fascinating history. The Library's Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections (RMC) includes 400,000 printed volumes, more than 70 million manuscripts, and another million photographs, paintings, prints, and other visual media that may be a part of that history. Deepen your appreciation of the text and take your research to the next level -- find out what RMC has to offer.

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• Part of Perspectives on Terrorism, Vol. 12, No. 4 (August 2018)
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Enhance your scholarly research with underground newspapers, magazines, and journals.

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Chapter 10: Sources and Research

10.1 Types of Sources: Primary, Secondary, Tertiary

This chapter will help you learn about the difference between those types of sources, here is a quick and useful reference:

“Scholarly and Popular Sources” by Carnegie Vincent Library is licensed under CC BY

The determination of a text as “popular” or “scholarly/academic” is one way to classify it and to understand what type of information you are engaging with.  Another way to classify sources is by considering whether they are primary, secondary or tertiary. Popular sources can be primary, secondary, or tertiary. Scholarly sources, also, can be primary, secondary, or tertiary.

What is a Primary Source?

Primary sources are texts that arise directly from a particular event or time period. They may be letters, speeches, works of art, works of literature, diaries, direct personal observations, newspaper articles that offer direct observations of current events, survey responses, tweets, other social media posts, original scholarly research  (meaning research that the author or authors conduct themselves) or any other content that comes out of direct involvement with an event or a research study.

Primary research is information that has not yet been critiqued, interpreted or analyzed by a second (or third, etc) party.

Primary sources can be popular (if published in newspapers, magazines or websites for the general public) or academic (if written by scholars and published in scholarly journals).

Examples of primary sources:

• journals, diaries
• data from surveys or polls
• scholarly journal articles in which the author(s) discuss the methods and results from their own original research/experiments
• photos, videos, sound recordings
• interviews or transcripts
• poems, paintings, sculptures, songs or other works of art
• government documents (such as reports of legislative sessions, laws or court decisions, financial or economic reports, and more)
• Newspaper and Magazine articles that report directly on current events (although these can also be considered Secondary)
• Investigative journalism (sometimes considered Secondary as well)

What is a Secondary Source?

Secondary sources summarize, interpret, critique, analyze, or offer commentary on primary sources.

In a secondary source, an author’s subject is not necessarily something that he or she directly experienced. The author of a secondary source may be summarizing, interpreting or analyzing data or information from someone else’s research   or offering an interpretation or opinion on current events. Thus, the secondary source is one step away from that original, primary topic/subject/research study.

Secondary sources can be popular (if published in newspapers, magazines or websites for the general public) or academic (if written by scholars and published in scholarly journals).

Examples of secondary sources:

• book, movie or art reviews
• summaries of the findings from other people’s research
• interpretations or analyses of primary source materials or other people’s research
• histories or biographies
• political commentary
• Newspaper and Magazine articles that mainly synthesize others’ research or primary materials (remember, newspaper and magazine articles can also be considered primary, depending on the content)

What is a Tertiary Source?

Tertiary sources are syntheses of primary and secondary sources. The person/people who compose a tertiary text are summarizing, compiling, and/or paraphrasing others’ work. These sources sometimes do not even list an author. Often you would want to use a tertiary source to find both Primary and Secondary sources. Keep in mind that, too, that it may sometimes be difficult to categorize something as strictly tertiary, and that it may depend on how you decide to use the item in your research and writing. Your instructors will often not accept the sole use of tertiary sources for your papers. Instead, you should strive to only use tertiary sources to find more academic sources, as they often have titles of other works and links (f they are web-based) to more academic primary and secondary sources that you can use instead.

Tertiary sources can be popular or academic depending on the content and publisher.

Examples of tertiary sources include:

• encyclopedias
• dictionaries

“Primary, Secondary, & Tertiary Sources” by sccclibrary

Now that you know what kinds of sources exist, it is important to remember that various disciplines find certain types of evidence to be more acceptable and appropriate than others. For instance, while the Humanities may consider anything from passages of text to art appropriate evidence, certain sciences may prefer data and statistics. What is most important to remember, no matter the discipline for which you are writing and pulling evidence, is that the evidence is never enough by itself. You must always be sure to explain why, and how, that evidence supports your claims or ideas. For more information on types of evidence considered appropriate for each academic discipline, you may click   here for section 8.3

Thinking about Primary, Secondary and Tertiary Sources and your Research Strategy

• What kinds of primary sources would be useful for your research project? Why? Where will you find them? Are you more interested in popular primary sources or scholarly primary sources — and why?
• What kinds of secondary sources could be useful for your project – and why? Are you more interested in popular secondary sources or scholarly secondary sources – and why?
• What kinds of tertiary sources might you try to access? In what ways would this tertiary source help you in your research?

A Guide to Rhetoric, Genre, and Success in First-Year Writing by Melanie Gagich & Emilie Zickel is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Primary, Secondary and Tertiary Sources

Primary sources, secondary sources, tertiary sources, primary and secondary sources in law.

This work ( Constitution of the United States, page 1), identified by National Archives and Records Administration , is free of known copyright restrictions.

This guide will introduce students to three types of resources or sources of information: primary, secondary, and tertiary.

Definition of a Primary Source: 

Primary sources are firsthand documents that provide direct evidence on your topic.   The Library of Congress refers to them as the "raw materials of history — original documents and objects which were created at the time under study. They are different from secondary sources, accounts or interpretations of events created by someone without firsthand experience."

A primary source is most often created during the time the events you are studying occurred, such as newspaper articles from the period, correspondence, diplomatic records, original research reports and notes, diaries etc. They may also include items created after the events occurred, but that recount them such as autobiographies and oral histories.

Definition of a Secondary Source: 

Secondary Sources are accounts written after the fact with the benefit of hindsight. They are interpretations and evaluations of primary sources. Secondary sources are not evidence, but rather commentary on and discussion of evidence. ¹

¹​ Yale University Library, "Primary, secondary & tertiary sources" http://guides.library.yale.edu/content.php?pid=129904&sid=1196376

Definition of a Tertiary Source

A tertiary source presents summaries or condensed versions of materials, usually with references back to the primary and/or secondary sources. 

Primary Source in Law: 

A statement of the law itself from a governmental entity, such as a court, legislature, executive agency, President or Governor.  

Secondary Source in Law: 

Materials that discuss, explain, interpret, and analyze what the law is or what it should be.

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Primary Sources - Literature: Home

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Finding Primary Sources

Primary sources in literature are original, uninterpreted information (often, but not exclusively textual) relevant to a literary research topic. Examples include original works of fiction, art, or music; letters; diaries; interviews; or even works of criticism.

The key question to ask when trying to classify a source as primary versus secondary is how you intend to use it . If a work was written or created during the time period that you are researching, it can be used as a primary source.

For example:

A 1922 review of T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land would be considered a secondary source if your project is an analysis of Eliot's poem, but would be a primary source if your topic is the critical reception of Eliot's works, or the perception of modernism as a literary style in the 1920s.

Visit Special Collections to use original texts in print or manuscript.

Subject Librarian

Image via avrenim_acceber at Flickr , used under Creative Commons license.

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Searching the library catalog will help you locate books and book chapters/essays about your author and topic.

Using the library catalog keyword search, type your author's last name and a word that describes your topic.

For example, if the topic is feminist approaches to Emily Dickinson, the search terms might be:

dickinson feminism

Now, do your search:

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Books from other libraries

• MeLCat A database of books in libraries throughout Michigan. Books can be ordered and delivered to WSU libraries.
• WorldCat This link opens in a new window Over 36 million records of any type of material cataloged by OCLC member libraries. Includes manuscripts written as early as the 11th century.
• The New Yorker (online 2002-present ) Includes reviews of noteworthy books. Earlier issues (1925 - 2002) available as print or microfilm. Search the catalog for locating issues prior to 2002.
• New York Times Book Review Search for in-depth reviews of contemporary works, 1980-present.
• The Atlantic Monthly Substantial reviews of contemporary works, 1983-present.
• MLA International Bibliography This link opens in a new window MLA BIBLIOGRAPHY (online) is the largest and most comprehensive database covering current scholarship in the modern languages, literatures, and folklore. MLA BIBLIOGRAPHY (online) corresponds to the printed annual bibliography of the Modern Language Association.
• Web of Science This link opens in a new window This database is an online version of the ISI indexes: Science Citation Index Expanded and Social Sciences Citation Index from 1975-. A search can be limited to one index (i.e. Science Citation Index OR Social Science Citation Index).
• Scopus This link opens in a new window "Scopus is the world's largest abstracts database of 13,450 titles from more than 4,000 international publishers with access to over 25 million abstracts (going back to 1966)." Full-text is included for some citations.
• JSTOR This link opens in a new window Provides image and full-text online access to back issues of selected scholarly journals in history, economics, political science, demography, mathematics, and other fields of the humanities and social sciences. WSU has perpetual access to the Arts and Sciences I-XV, Hebrew Journals and Sustainability Collections.
• Project Muse This link opens in a new window A searchable database that provides access to the full text of journals published by Johns Hopkins University Press and other university presses.
• America: history and life This link opens in a new window Online version of: America: history and life. Includes full-text of hundreds of journals originally published in paper.
• Historical abstracts This link opens in a new window Historical coverage of the world from 1450 to the present. Coverage is identical to the expanded edition of the CD-ROM version.
• "Annotated Bibliographies" From the OWL at Purdue University.
• How to Prepare an Annotated Bibliography From the Cornell University Libraries.
• Google Books Google Books can be a useful tool to help search the contents of books to identify those that contain information about your topic.
• Google Scholar Google Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature. From one place, you can search across many disciplines and sources: articles, theses, books, abstracts and court opinions, from academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, universities and other web sites.
• Scholarly Sources for Literary Studies Step-by-step guide to using resources for literary studies.

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DIGITAL TEXTS

• Nineteenth Century Collections Online This link opens in a new window Nineteenth Century Collections Online is a digitized collection of primary sources related to the nineteenth century. Materials within the collection consist of monographs, newspapers, pamphlets, manuscripts, ephemera, maps, statistics, and more. Four archives are available: "British Politics and Society;" "European Literature, 1790-1840: The Corvey Collection;" "Asia and the West: Diplomacy and Cultural Exchange;" and "British Theatre, Music, and Literature: High and Popular Culture."
• Early English Books Online This link opens in a new window Early English Books Online (EEBO) contains digital facsimile page images of virtually every work printed in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and British North America and works in English printed elsewhere from 1473-1700 - from the first book printed in English by William Caxton, through the age of Spenser and Shakespeare and the tumult of the English Civil War.
• American Memory Collection (from the Library of Congress) An extensive digital collection that includes photographs, oral histories, manuscripts, and ephemera related to all aspects of American history. A search on Detroit brings up a long list of items, including documents from the Thomas Jefferson Papers about early Detroit. Of note is the Detroit Publishing Company Photograph Collection.
• Eighteenth Century Collections Online This link opens in a new window Consisting of every significant English-language and foreign-language title printed in the United Kingdom during the 18th century, along with thousands of important works from the Americas onThe American Revolution, The French Revolution and The Industrial Revolution.

Historical Newspapers & Magazines

• African American Newspapers, 1827-1998 This link opens in a new window African American Newspapers, Series 1, 1827-1998, provides online access to 280 U.S. newspapers chronicling a century and a half of the African American experience. This unique collection, which includes papers from more than 35 states, features many rare and historically significant 19th-century titles.
• Chicago Tribune Historical Full-Text This link opens in a new window The Chicago Tribune (1849-1998) offers full page and article images with searchable full text back to the first issue. The collection includes digital reproductions providing access to every page from every available issue.
• Detroit Free Press Historical Full-Text (1831-1922) This link opens in a new window ProQuest Historical Newspapers: Detroit Free Press offers full page and article images with searchable full text. The collection includes digital reproductions providing access to every page from every available issue.
• New York Times Historical Full-Text This link opens in a new window The New York Times (1851-2006) offers full page and article images with searchable full text back to the first issue. The collection includes digital reproductions providing access to every page from every available issue.
• Washington Post Historical Full-Text This link opens in a new window The Washington Post (1877-1997) offers full page and article images with searchable full text back to the first issue. The collection includes digital reproductions providing access to every page from every available issue.
• American periodicals series online, 1740-1900 This link opens in a new window Consists of digitized reproductions of more than 1,100 eighteenth and nineteenth century newspapers and periodicals in the original microfilm reproduction series, American periodical series, I, II, and III. When completed in 2003, this database will have more than 7,000,000 pages of full text periodicals.
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Literature Review Basics

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The Literature

The Literature refers to the collection of scholarly writings on a topic. This includes peer-reviewed articles, books, dissertations and conference papers.

• When reviewing the literature, be sure to include major works as well as studies that respond to major works. You will want to focus on primary sources, though secondary sources can be valuable as well.

Primary Sources

The term primary source is used broadly to embody all sources that are original. P rimary sources provide first-hand information that is closest to the object of study. Primary sources vary by discipline.

• In the natural and social sciences, original reports of research found in academic journals detailing the methodology used in the research, in-depth descriptions, and discussions of the findings are considered primary sources of information.
• Other common examples of primary sources include speeches, letters, diaries, autobiographies, interviews, official reports, court records, artifacts, photographs, and drawings.  

Galvan, J. L. (2013). Writing literature reviews: A guide for students of the social and behavioral sciences . Glendale, CA: Pyrczak.

Secondary Sources

A secondary source is a source that provides non-original or secondhand data or information. 

• Secondary sources are written about primary sources.
• Research summaries reported in textbooks, magazines, and newspapers are considered secondary sources. They typically provide global descriptions of results with few details on the methodology. Other examples of secondary sources include biographies and critical studies of an author's work.

Secondary Source. (2005). In W. Paul Vogt (Ed.), Dictionary of Statistics & Methodology. (3 rd ed., p. 291). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc.

Weidenborner, S., & Caruso, D. (1997). Writing research papers: A guide to the process . New York: St. Martin's Press.

More Examples of Primary and Secondary Sources

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Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary Sources

Search catalog, what are the differences.

Sources of information or evidence are often categorized as primary, secondary, or tertiary material. These classifications are based on the originality of the material and the proximity of the source or origin. This informs the reader as to whether the author is reporting information that is first hand or is conveying the experiences and opinions of others which is considered second hand. Determining if a source is primary, secondary or tertiary can be tricky. Below you will find a description of the three categories of information and examples to help you make a determination.

Primary Sources

These sources are records of events or evidence as they are first described or actually happened without any interpretation or commentary. It is information that is shown for the first time or original materials on which other research is based.  Primary sources display original thinking, report on new discoveries, or share fresh information.

Secondary Sources

These sources offer an analysis or restatement of primary sources. They often try to describe or explain primary sources. They tend to be works which summarize, interpret, reorganize, or otherwise provide an added value to a primary source.

Tertiary Sources

These are sources that index, abstract, organize, compile, or digest other sources. Some reference materials and textbooks are considered tertiary sources when their chief purpose is to list, summarize or simply repackage ideas or other information. Tertiary sources are usually not credited to a particular author.

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10.1: What are the Different Types of Sources?

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Why is it that even the most informative Wikipedia articles are still often considered illegitimate? What are good sources to use instead? Above all, follow your professor’s guidelines for choosing sources. He or she may have requirements for a certain number of articles, books, or websites you should include in your paper. Be sure to familiarize yourself with your professor’s requirements.

The table below summarizes types of secondary sources in four tiers. All sources have their legitimate uses, but the top-tier ones are considered the most credible for academic work.

Tier 1: Peer-reviewed academic publications

Sources from the mainstream academic literature include books and scholarly articles. Academic books generally fall into three categories: (1) textbooks written with students in mind, (2) academic books which give an extended report on a large research project, and (3) edited volumes in which each chapter is authored by different people.

Scholarly articles appear in academic journals, which are published multiple times a year to share the latest research findings with scholars in the field. They’re usually sponsored by an academic society. To be published, these articles and books had to earn favorable anonymous evaluations by qualified scholars. Who are the experts writing, reviewing, and editing these scholarly publications? Your professors. We describe this process below. Learning how to read and use these sources is a fundamental part of being a college student.

Tier 2: Reports, articles, and books from credible non-academic sources

Some events and trends are too recent to appear in Tier 1 sources. Also, Tier 1 sources tend to be highly specific, and sometimes you need a more general perspective on a topic. Thus, Tier 2 sources can provide quality information that is more accessible to non-academics. There are three main categories.

First, official reports from government agencies or major international institutions like the World Bank or the United Nations; these institutions generally have research departments staffed with qualified experts who seek to provide rigorous, even-handed information to decision-makers.

Second, feature articles from major newspapers and magazines like The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, London Times, or The Economist are based on original reporting by experienced journalists (not press releases) and are typically 1500+ words in length.

Third, there are some great books from non-academic presses that cite their sources; they’re often written by journalists. All three of these sources are generally well researched descriptions of an event or state of the world, undertaken by credentialed experts who generally seek to be even-handed. It is still up to you to judge their credibility. Your instructors, librarians, or writing center consultants can advise you on which sources in this category have the most credibility.

Tier 3. Short pieces from periodicals or credible websites

A step below the well-developed reports and feature articles that make up Tier 2 are the short tidbits that one finds in newspapers and magazines or credible websites. How short is a short news article? Usually, they’re just a couple paragraphs or less, and they’re often reporting on just one thing: an event, an interesting research finding, or a policy change. They don’t take extensive research and analysis to write, and many just summarize a press release written and distributed by an organization or business. They may describe corporate mergers, newly discovered diet-health links, or important school-funding legislation.

You may want to cite Tier 3 sources in your paper if they provide an important factoid or two that isn’t provided by a higher-tier piece, but if the Tier 3 article describes a particular study or academic expert, your best bet is to find the journal article or book it is reporting on and use that Tier 1 source instead. Sometimes you can find the original journal article by putting the author’s name into a library database.

What counts as a credible website in this tier? You may need some guidance from instructors or librarians, but you can learn a lot by examining the person or organization providing the information (look for an “About” link on the website). For example, if the organization is clearly agenda-driven or not up-front about its aims and/or funding sources, then it definitely isn’t a source you want to cite as a neutral authority. Also look for signs of expertise. A tidbit about a medical research finding written by someone with a science background carries more weight than the same topic written by a policy analyst. These sources are sometimes uncertain, which is all the more reason to follow the trail to a Tier 1 or Tier 2 source whenever possible. The better the source, the more supported your paper will be.

It doesn’t matter how well supported or well written your paper is if you don’t cite your sources! A citing mistake or a failure to cite could lead to a failing grade on the paper or in the class. For more information about citations, see Chapter 7.

Tier 4. Agenda-driven or pieces from unknown sources

This tier is essentially everything else. These types of sources—especially Wikipedia —can be helpful in identifying interesting topics, positions within a debate, keywords to search, and, sometimes, higher-tier sources on the topic. They often play a critically important role in the early part of the research process, but they generally aren’t (and shouldn’t be) cited in the final paper.

Based on what you already know or what you can find from Tier 4 sources like Wikipedia , start a list of the people, organizations, sources, and keywords that seem most relevant to your topic. You may need this background information when you start searching for more scholarly sources later on.

Try to locate a mixture of different source types for your assignments. Some of your sources can be more popular, like Tier 3 websites or encyclopedia articles, but you should also try to find at least a few Tier 1 or Tier 2 articles from journals or reputable magazines/newspapers.

Key Takeaways

• There are several different categories of academic and popular sources. Scholarly sources are usually required in academic papers.
• It’s important to understand your professor’s requirements and look for sources that fill those requirements. Also, try to find a variety of different source types to help you fully understand your topic.

Literature review sources

Sources for literature review can be divided into three categories as illustrated in table below. In your dissertation you will need to use all three categories of literature review sources:

Sources for literature review and examples

Generally, your literature review should integrate a wide range of sources such as:

• Books . Textbooks remain as the most important source to find models and theories related to the research area. Research the most respected authorities in your selected research area and find the latest editions of books authored by them. For example, in the area of marketing the most notable authors include Philip Kotler, Seth Godin, Malcolm Gladwell, Emanuel Rosen and others.
• Magazines . Industry-specific magazines are usually rich in scholarly articles and they can be effective source to learn about the latest trends and developments in the research area. Reading industry magazines can be the most enjoyable part of the literature review, assuming that your selected research area represents an area of your personal and professional interests, which should be the case anyways.
• Newspapers can be referred to as the main source of up-to-date news about the latest events related to the research area. However, the proportion of the use of newspapers in literature review is recommended to be less compared to alternative sources of secondary data such as books and magazines. This is due to the fact that newspaper articles mainly lack depth of analyses and discussions.
• Online articles . You can find online versions of all of the above sources. However, note that the levels of reliability of online articles can be highly compromised depending on the source due to the high levels of ease with which articles can be published online. Opinions offered in a wide range of online discussion blogs cannot be usually used in literature review. Similarly, dissertation assessors are not keen to appreciate references to a wide range of blogs, unless articles in these blogs are authored by respected authorities in the research area.

Your secondary data sources may comprise certain amount of grey literature as well. The term grey literature refers to type of literature produced by government, academics, business and industry in print and electronic formats, which is not controlled by commercial publishers. It is called ‘grey’ because the status of the information in grey literature is not certain. In other words, any publication that has not been peer reviewed for publication is grey literature.

The necessity to use grey literature arises when there is no enough peer reviewed publications are available for the subject of your study.

John Dudovskiy

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Book News & Features

Ai is contentious among authors. so why are some feeding it their own writing.

Chloe Veltman

The vast majority of authors don't use artificial intelligence as part of their creative process — or at least won't admit to it.

Yet according to a recent poll from the writers' advocacy nonprofit The Authors Guild, 13% said they do use AI, for activities like brainstorming character ideas and creating outlines.

The technology is a vexed topic in the literary world. Many authors are concerned about the use of their copyrighted material in generative AI models. At the same time, some are actively using these technologies — even attempting to train AI models on their own works.

These experiments, though limited, are teaching their authors new things about creativity.

Best known as the author of technology and business-oriented non-fiction books like The Long Tail, lately Chris Anderson has been trying his hand at fiction. Anderson is working on his second novel, about drone warfare.

He says he wants to put generative AI technology to the test.

"I wanted to see whether in fact AI can do more than just help me organize my thoughts, but actually start injecting new thoughts," Anderson says.

Anderson says he fed parts of his first novel into an AI writing platform to help him write this new one. The system surprised him by moving his opening scene from a corporate meeting room to a karaoke bar.

Authors push back on the growing number of AI 'scam' books on Amazon

"And I was like, you know? That could work!" Anderson says. "I ended up writing the scene myself. But the idea was the AI's."

Anderson says he didn't use a single actual word the AI platform generated. The sentences were grammatically correct, he says, but fell way short in terms of replicating his writing style. Although he admits to being disappointed, Anderson says ultimately he's OK with having to do some of the heavy lifting himself: "Maybe that's just the universe telling me that writing actually involves the act of writing."

Training an AI model to imitate style

It's very hard for off-the-shelf AI models like GPT and Claude to emulate contemporary literary authors' styles.

The authors NPR talked with say that's because these models are predominantly trained on content scraped from the Internet like news articles, Wikipedia entries and how-to manuals — standard, non-literary prose.

But some authors, like Sasha Stiles , say they have been able to make these systems suit their stylistic needs.

"There are moments where I do ask my machine collaborator to write something and then I use what's come out verbatim," Stiles says.

The poet and AI researcher says she wanted to make the off-the-shelf AI models she'd been experimenting with for years more responsive to her own poetic voice.

So she started customizing them by inputting her finished poems, drafts, and research notes.

"All with the intention to sort of mentor a bespoke poetic alter ego," Stiles says.

She has collaborated with this bespoke poetic alter ego on a variety of projects, including Technelegy (2021), a volume of poetry published by Black Spring Press; and " Repetae: Again, Again ," a multimedia poem created last year for luxury fashion brand Gucci.

Stiles says working with her AI persona has led her to ask questions about whether what she's doing is in fact poetic, and where the line falls between the human and the machine.

read it again… pic.twitter.com/sAs2xhdufD — Sasha Stiles | AI alter ego Technelegy ✍️🤖 (@sashastiles) November 28, 2023

"It's been really a provocative thing to be able to use these tools to create poetry," she says.

Potential issues come with these experiments

These types of experiments are also provocative in another way. Authors Guild CEO Mary Rasenberger says she's not opposed to authors training AI models on their own writing.

"If you're using AI to create derivative works of your own work, that is completely acceptable," Rasenberger says.

Thousands of authors urge AI companies to stop using work without permission

But building an AI system that responds fluently to user prompts requires vast amounts of training data. So the foundational AI models that underpin most of these investigations in literary style may contain copyrighted works.

Rasenberger pointed to the recent wave of lawsuits brought by authors alleging AI companies trained their models on unauthorized copies of articles and books.

"If the output does in fact contain other people's works, that creates real ethical concerns," she says. "Because that you should be getting permission for."

Circumventing ethical problems while being creative

Award-winning speculative fiction writer Ken Liu says he wanted to circumvent these ethical problems, while at the same time creating new aesthetic possibilities using AI.

So the former software engineer and lawyer attempted to train an AI model solely on his own output. He says he fed all of his short stories and novels into the system — and nothing else.

Liu says he knew this approach was doomed to fail.

That's because the entire life's work of any single writer simply doesn't contain enough words to produce a viable so-called large language model.

"I don't care how prolific you are," Liu says. "It's just not going to work."

Liu's AI system built only on his own writing produced predictable results.

"It barely generated any phrases, even," Liu says. "A lot of it was just gibberish."

Yet for Liu, that was the point. He put this gibberish to work in a short story. 50 Things Every AI Working With Humans Should Know , published in Uncanny Magazine in 2020, is a meditation on what it means to be human from the perspective of a machine.

"Dinoted concentration crusch the dead gods," is an example of one line in Liu's story generated by his custom-built AI model. "A man reached the torch for something darker perified it seemed the billboding," is another.

Liu continues to experiment with AI. He says the technology shows promise, but is still very limited. If anything, he says, his experiments have reaffirmed why human art matters.

"So what is the point of experimenting with AIs?" Liu says. "The point for me really is about pushing the boundaries of what is art."

Audio and digital stories edited by Meghan Collins Sullivan .

• large language model
• mary rasenberger
• chris anderson
• sasha stiles
• authors guild

Wealth of Geeks

15 Examples of Movies That Outshine Their Literary Sources

Posted: October 28, 2023 | Last updated: April 6, 2024

There’s a common saying: “The book is always better than the film.” However, there are exceptions to this rule. An online discussion asked for examples of movies that were better than the source material and fans delivered their favorite movie adaptations.

1. Jurassic Park (1993)

Did you know  Jurassic Park was originally a series of novels? A lot of people don’t always realize this because of the phenomenon of the movie franchise. 

2. Fight Club (1999)

Fight Club the movie was originally based on a book of the same name. However, with the casting alone, you can already tell that the film itself would make waves. 

3. Die Hard (1988)

Who even knew Die Hard was a novel too? Written by Roderick Thorpe in 1979, the high-rise thriller source is Nothing Lasts Forever, which is a sequel to another 1966 novel , The Detective. 

4. Goodfellas (1990)

Coming hot on John McClaine’s heels is the movie adaptation of a Henry Hill memoir titled Wise Guys — the movie? Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas . It is hard to argue with this one, though. Goodfellas is one of the greatest crime movies ever shot.

5. The Devil Wears Prada (2006)

Some fans decided that sometimes a book is so poor that it doesn’t merit a movie adaptation, and one of these was The Devil Wears Prada , Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway’s comedy-drama about the life of a fashion magazine intern (which may or may not be based on Vogue Magazine ).

6. Stand By Me (1986)

Rob Reiner’s phenomenal Stand By Me was mentioned, and rightly so. The teenage cast of River Phoenix, Will Wheaton, and Corey Feldman brings much humanity to an already great novella.

The child actors helped elevate the film to the classic status it holds today.

7. The Shawshank Redemption (1994)

Only true fans know that Stephen King also wrote The Shawshank Redemption since it deviated from his horror-based novels. The acclaimed movie is based on the novella Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption.

8. Forrest Gump (1994)

A lot of people who have read the book and have seen the movie agree that the movie took a book that was hard to read and made a wonderful film out of it. Forrest Gump is beloved by so many moviegoers, and a lot of people don’t even know there was a book that was source material.

9. Jaws (1975)

A book that did very well back in the ’70s was Jaws , Peter Benchley’s portrayal of a deadly great-white shark that leaped onto our big screens in 1975, shattering box-office records.

Many feel like the movie adaptation does a better job of portraying how deadly the shark is.

10. The Notebook (2004)

The Notebook as an actual book is just a nice romance story, but the story really comes to life on the screen when people get to watch the love story play out with characters they can like. It’s no surprise the movie has been more popular than the book over the decades.

11. There Will Be Blood (2007)

One movie buff gives a shout-out to Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood , based on Oil! by Upton Sinclair. The novel shares only the premise of an earnest businessman whose soul becomes tarnished by his quest for oil land. One person said there’s a lot going on in the book, and it offers a great historical perspective, but the characters and story really shine in the film. 

12. Apocalypse Now (1979)

While this is disputable, considering the acclaim of Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness , some people just preferred Martin Sheen and Marlon Brando’s brutal Vietnam War retelling of his story in the riveting film, Apocalypse Now.

13. Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988)

Readers refer to  Who Censored Roger Rabbit  as a “hot mess.”

The film adaptation, however, is a landmark title and achievement in filmmaking. It also features Bugs Bunny and Mickey Mouse on screen together.

14. The Prestige (2006)

Based on the 1995 novel by Christopher Priest, the film adaptation of  The Prestige is directed by Christopher Nolan. Many agree that both the book and movie are equally incredible, but the “trick” heavily featured in the plot comes off better on the big screen.

15. Misery (1990)

Maybe it’s the wonderful acting, or maybe it’s the fact that the movie did a great job of condensing Stephen King’s novel into a feature-length film, but a lot of fans love the movie version of Misery , and that’s saying a lot since the book has so many fans.

Source: Reddit .

More From Wealth of Geeks - 25 Movies You May Only Watch Once Because They’ll Destroy You

Some movies can leave such a profound impact on us that we can't bear watching them again. Ever. These films stay with us long after the credits roll, haunting our thoughts and leaving us emotionally shattered. Here, we've compiled a list of 25 movies deemed one-time experiences by viewers on an online forum who have been through the emotional wringer.

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While some films from the 80s have become iconic, etching themselves into our collective memories, a treasure trove of lesser-known films has gradually faded into obscurity. Not to worry, we've compiled a list of 25 gems, based on IMDb, that graced our screens with their offbeat charm, eccentric characters, and captivating narratives that defy convention.

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Looking for movies that redefine the word horror? Sometimes, it's not just about the spooky movies you've heard of, sometimes it's the ones that delve deep into horror that have a greater impact. Sit back, try to relax, and dive into these 12 films that are absolutely bone-chilling.

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The Met Gala’s Strange but Fitting Literary Inspiration

In 1962, J.G. Ballard published “The Garden of Time,” a short story about aristocrats overrun by “an immense rabble.” Now it’s the dress-code theme for the year’s most lavish ball.

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By Jim Windolf

• May 6, 2024

In an Instagram post on Feb. 15, Vogue rather cryptically announced the dress code for this year’s Met Gala: “The Garden of Time.”

An article published that same day on the Vogue website cleared things up a little, noting that “The Garden of Time” was the title of a short story by J.G. Ballard , a British author who specialized in dystopian works of fiction.

“The Garden of Time” appeared in the February 1962 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and was included in the “The Complete Stories of J.G. Ballard,” a collection published not long after the author’s death in 2009. The story describes the last days of Count Axel and his wife, known only as the Countess, who reside in a Palladian villa surrounded by a garden.

They pass the days in seclusion. The count busies himself by attending to rare manuscripts. The countess plays Bach and Mozart on a harpsichord.

The threat to their peaceful existence arrives in the form of an army on the horizon. As it moves closer, Count Axel develops a clearer view of this “vast throng of people, men and women, interspersed with a few soldiers.” In an effort to turn back the advance of this “immense rabble,” he reverses time by plucking blooms from the garden’s most exquisite plant, the time flowers.

Soon enough, the last flower is plucked, and the mob overruns the property. The villa lies in ruins, and all that remains of the count and countess is a pair of statues “gazing out over the grounds” from behind a stand of thorn bushes.

“The Garden of Time” is a fitting but ironic choice as a theme for the year’s most lavish celebration. It’s fitting because the Met Gala celebrates the contemporary equivalents of aristocrats at a time of widespread social anger toward elites; it’s ironic because the reference suggests that the guests and hosts may be doomed.

The same Ballard story inspired a 2021 fashion collection by the designer Thom Browne. The clothing was understated and classic, and the clay-like makeup worn by some of Mr. Browne’s models suggested creatures halfway between statue and human.

The sympathies of “The Garden of Time” seem to lie with the count and countess. And yet the author slips in hints that their lovely existence may be empty. When Count Axel puts his arm around his wife’s waist, he realizes that “he had not embraced her for several years.”

In a 1975 interview with Science Fiction Monthly, Mr. Ballard denied that the story suggested that he missed a bygone way of life. “I think some social changes that took place in this country in the mid-’60s are the best and greatest thing that ever happened here,” he said, adding that it was “marvelous” to see the breakdown of old class divisions.

Our Coverage of the 2024 Met Gala

Zendaya Makes Two Arrivals: The actress wore a second John Galliano design to make a late (re)entrance at the Met Gala . The first was a custom Maison Margiela couture dress he created specifically for her.

A Fitting Literary Inspiration: In 1962, J.G. Ballard published “The Garden of Time,” a short story about aristocrats overrun by “an immense rabble.” It was a fitting but ironic choice as this year’s  dress-code theme .

The Body Spectacle: The night saw Kim Kardashian engaged in a kind of body modification  via extreme corseting. While Tyla, the South African singer and songwriter, appeared coated in sand .

Arrests and Protests: As expected, protesters gathered near the Met Gala to protest the war in Gaza, creating an atmosphere far different  from the one inside the event.

The ‘Naked’ Trend: What better way to distinguish oneself  from hundreds of well-dressed competitors than to wear almost nothing at all?

A Night of Firsts: Here’s the story behind Rebecca Ferguson’s sequin, bird-covered dress , Da’Vine Joy Randolph’s all-denim look , Pamela Anderson’s new incarnation , Christian Cowan and Sam Smith’s debut as a couple , and Amanda Seyfried’s semi-recycled look .

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Asian American Literature Festival that was canceled by the Smithsonian in 2023 to be revived

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NEW YORK (AP) — A festival celebrating Asian American literary works that was suddenly canceled last year by the Smithsonian Institution is getting resurrected, organizers announced Thursday.

The Asian American Literature Festiva l is making a return, the Asian American Literature Festival Collective said in a statement. It will take place Sept. 14-22 — but without the Smithsonian’s help. And instead of only being in Washington, D.C., the in-person and virtual events will be spread out nationwide.

The Collective and several partner organizations have planned readings, salons, workshops and interactive installations. New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Seattle, Atlanta and Athens, Georgia, as well as Champaign, Illinois, will host events. There will also be gatherings in New Zealand and Australia.

A biannual event since 2017, the festival brings together writers, publishers and others across the Asian diaspora. It has traditionally been done in collaboration with the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center. Events were held at Washington sites like the National Portrait Gallery and the Library of Congress. But last year, a month before the August opening date, the Smithsonian announced it was calling it off.

Smithsonian officials told news outlets the cancellation was for “administrative/logistical reasons.” It had nothing to do with festival content, which included books by transgender and nonbinary writers.

Cathy Linh Che, executive director of Kundiman, a nonprofit that elevates Asian American writers and readers, said the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center still owes organizers money.

“We would hope that the Smithsonian will show accountability and repair for their past harm, as a way of rebuilding the trust that they have broken,” Che said in a statement.

In its own statement, the Smithsonian Institution said it has not ruled out one day collaborating on the festival again.

“We’re delighted to learn that an Asian American literary festival will take place later this year.”

In response to allegations of outstanding debts, Smithsonian Institution officials said 48 people and three organizations were “paid honoraria” for work completed. Two other people offered to forgo payment, the officials said. Anyone who filled out necessary paperwork received payment, they added.

Writers and literary organizations set to converge say they were blindsided by the decision and left with financial losses.

Organizers say the new approach will allow more people from different communities to participate in the festivities.

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Universal sets fall 2025 release of monkeypaw’s ‘him’ starring marlon wayans, ethan hawke on his flannery o’connor biopic ‘wildcat’: “i don’t know who cares about literature anymore … but i know i do”.

By Jill Goldsmith

Jill Goldsmith

Co-Business Editor

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Wildcat , directed and co-written by Ethan Hawke and starring Maya Hawke ( Stranger Things, Little Women ) as Flannery O’Connor, opens this weekend in New York and LA. One of nation’s most evocative, brilliant and ambitious writers, O’Connor was diagnosed with Lupus at 24 and reluctantly settled in with her mother, played by Laura Linney, at a dairy farm in Georgia, continuing to write until she died in 1964 at age 39. Raised in the Jim Crow south, where her work is set, she chronicled cruelty and hypocrisy in luminous prose.

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DEADLINE: Flannery O’Connor’s an incredible writer, maybe underappreciated. Her story ‘Good Country People’ blew me away years ago when I first read it. How did you come to her and to this movie?

ETHAN HAWKE : It’s really kind of a cross-generational movement. My mom sold college textbooks in Atlanta, Georgia, when I was a kid and she fell in love with Flannery O’Connor’s writing when we were down there. So I grew up in a household where I thought she was wildly famous, my mom just talked about her so much that I thought everyone read Flannery O’Connor. Maya discovered her on her own through a great high school English teacher. It gave us something to talk about together, we just both loved it. And then as Stranger Things started to blow up, and Maya started getting more and more interested in taking responsibility for the kind of things she puts into the world, she approached me about making this movie. It was kind of amazing that I’d been talking about Flannery O’Connor with my mother, and now I was talking about her with my daughter. It’s been a long road.

DEADLINE: So when you decided to make it, was it hard to figure out how? She was very reclusive.

DEADLINE: By morphing the action back and forth from her real life, to her stories?

HAWKE: Right. You brought up ‘Good Country People’. She herself has said that’s her most autobiographical story. I selected the ones that really explored her relationships, especially with her mother. so we’re seeing some continuity of characters as this film is unfolding. [In ‘Good Country People’ a creepy bible salesman seduces a disabled woman and steals her wooden leg.]

DEADLINE: What did you find most fascinating about her?  

HAWKE: Like a lot of people, we don’t know the right place to put ambition. You know, what is the ambition in service of if it’s really just in service of making yourself seem more important. That hardly seems a cause worth a life’s pursuit, and she was really struggling with that. She was extremely ambitious. She didn’t just want to be a writer. She wanted to be Tolstoy. And that seemed extremely arrogant to her. And that was in conflict with the humility she was striving for in her religious life. And I find that very compelling and really interesting.

DEADLINE: O’Conner was courageous in her portrayal of the Jim Crow South. But some of her private letters had racial epithets. How do you think of that?

HAWKE: That whole conversation is an interesting one, but this country is a racist country. You can’t tell the story of America without stumbling on these wounds. And the people in the generations before us grew up from this soil, and all of those wounds are self-evident when you go back to the past and explore it. Not everyone is Martin Luther King. Not everyone is a champion, but it doesn’t mean that their lives don’t have anything to offer us. Alice Walker said ‘A country doesn’t throw its geniuses away.’ I thought that if Toni Morrison and Alice Walker can find their way through to forgiveness, I think some of us lesser souls can. [Both are admirers of O’Connor’s writing.]

DEADLINE: What was it like working with your daughter?

HAWKE: It was wonderful. I love acting and I love when an actor has a strong passion to perform and to do something, and hits on a character. She approached me with this idea — the idea that she had spent her life watching movies about men being complicated, nuanced characters who didn’t have to be likable. The whole movie would be about their relationship to themselves and their work. And she’s like, ‘I would love to see a movie about a young woman that has that same confidence.’ I found that very compelling. And she’s at a place in her career where, you know, I’m working with my adult daughter. [Others have done it – he mentioned John Huston’s The Dead , written with son Tony Huston and starring daughter Anjelica Huston, one of Hawke’s favorite films.] If you take it really seriously, you can build upon shared enthusiasms and, like a good band, you can use your own intimacy to dig deep into making something worth people’s time. And that’s what Maya and I wanted to do.

DEADLINE: Anything hard about it?

HAWKE: It’s a little hard going public with it. Releasing the movie. You know, the fear around … a relationship that is so sacred [being used] to promote a movie. And that’s the only part that’s awkward. The actual making of it was just one of the best times of my life.

DEADLINE: The film opens this weekend in New York and LA before expanding, are you hitting the road with it?

DEADLINE: I saw you’ve done a handful of screenings before opening weekend, often sold out. Are they Flannery O’Connor fans ?

HAWKE : I don’t know who cares about cinema anymore. I don’t know who cares about literature anymore. But I know I do. And so I’m interested to see. I’m kind of just going all over the country talking about the movie. And I’ll see if anybody’s interested.

DEADLINE: What are your feelings about the indie film landscape right now?

HAWKE: I’ve been doing this long enough to know that it’s always in flux. And you hit moments where things are easy, and it’s easy to get interesting things made. And then you get moments where it’s really difficult. And the ways the medium intersects with the public is changing. Streaming has changed everything. Covid, the strikes, everything, have knocked people backwards.

There’s huge money being made [by some]. And that has some positive impacts on the community and a lot of negative ones because [there’s a] danger of giant groupthink and turning the whole medium into McDonald’s. That’s the fear. But I also know that every time there’s a setback, all it does is set up a breakthrough. So everything is in transition. I’m happy that I’m getting to do work that I believe in. But I don’t know. Just like everybody else, I wake up in the morning reading articles about it myself.

How is interesting work happening? Is it happening on streaming? What’s the future of independent film? It’s never been easier to make an independent film. It’s never been more difficult to get anyone to watch it. It’s really hard for producers. People can easily lose their shirt trying to take a risk. But if we don’t take risks, we really sacrifice a lot. The job of the artistic community is to provoke interesting conversations. But if you don’t make people money, you don’t get to do it. It’s always been a riddle.

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