Beginning Costume Design Research
Design research requires that you draw on both primary and secondary sources for inspiration -- you can review definitions and examples of those source types on this page.
Questions? Can't find what you are looking for? Ask a Librarian!
Types of Sources
Primary Sources
- Materials that contain direct evidence, first-hand testimony, or an eyewitness account of a topic or event under investigation; includes items contemporaneous to the period.
- Primary sources provide the raw data for your research
- Examples: In addition to diaries, correspondence, photographs, works of art, physical artifacts, and many other types of sources typically considered to be primary sources, you may add just about anything to the list. The way you interpret or use a source determines whether it is a primary source or not.
Secondary Sources
- Use primary resources/data to solve research problems
- Examples: scholarly books and articles
- Secondary sources can be interpreted as primary sources when the artifactual characteristics of the item are of research value.
Adapted from The Craft of Research by Wayne C. Booth, Gregory G. Colomb, Joseph M. Williams. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, c2008.
Search Tips
Every discipline has its own universe of primary sources. Ask questions to focus your search. For example, you might ask:
Who would have produced sources relative to your topic?
What types of sources might exist?
When would they have been produced?
Where?
Why and for whom?
Doublet. Silk. early 1620s. Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Costume Institute Fund, in memory of Polaire Weissman, 1989. (1989.196).