Scholarly/Peer-reviewed journal:

• Publish peer-reviewed/refereed articles
• Devoted to research articles in one specific field of study
• Include full citations
• Include author information
• Can contains ads -- usually for academic publishers, books, or databases
• Examples: The American Historical Review, Journal of Black Studies, The Chaucer Review.

Trade journal:

• It's purpose is to keep the practitioner up to date in their industry (education, healthcare, media)
• Includes job postings
• Organizational news
• Continuing education information
• Editorials
• Plenty of advertising
• Example: Chronicle of Higher Education.

General interest magazine: 

• Its purpose is to provide information to a broad audience of concerned citizens, not just to scholars
• Written with any educated audience in mind
• Usually written by a member of the editorial staff, a scholar, or a freelance writer  
• Most have an attractive appearance with illustrations and photographs
• Usually have some advertisements
• Often have a political slant
• Examples: National Geographic, The Atlantic.

Popular magazines:

• Written almost exclusively for entertainment purposes
• Articles are usually very short, but there are sometimes longer essays
• Author credentials are not present
• Sources are rarely cited
• Often have large amounts of advertising
• Examples: Vogue, Seventeen.

Almanacs

Annual publications that are useful for searching for specific facts, statistics, people, places, events, and aspects of popular culture like sports or entertainment. 

Anthologies

A published collection of writings written by one or multiple authors, such as poems, short stories, plays, songs, or excerpts that are from the same time period or are related by subject matter. 

Atlases

Contain political, cultural, road, and/or thematic maps and can be organized based on a specific theme or geographic area.

Bibliographies

A published bibliography is a collection of highly specialized annotated bibliographies. Use these to get oriented to the current research on a topic. 

Book Reviews

These can appear in peer-reviewed scholarly journals, or in popular newspapers like the New York Times. They are usually short articles (1-3 pages) about a new book. The author summarizes the book and gives their opinion about how it fits into their scholarly field. These are not usually used as secondary sources.

Chronologies, timelines

Chronologies/timelines display the major milestones of an event or process. 

Companions

Elaborates on an already published book or general topic by providing the reader with a deeper understanding of concepts, themes, characters, places, and ideas. They are meant to be studied alongside other primary and secondary material on a particular topic.

Dictionaries

Dictionaries contain information about words listed alphabetically. There are both general and specialized dictionaries.

Directories

Organized lists of people/institutions and provide information on addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses.

Encyclopedias

Encyclopedias provide general background information on a topic in a broad nature, and contain references to other related works. There are both general and topic specific encyclopedias.

Handbooks

Provide useful insight into the major themes of a particular academic field. Handbooks usually have longer overview essays with longer lists of sources than an Encyclopedia or Dictionary.

Indexes

An index contains a list of articles or other publications within a particular topic or discipline, with each entry containing full citation information. Scholarly databases are considered indexes, but there are some indexes in print as well.

Readers

A book of collected or assorted pieces of writing, such as essays, that are related by a common theme, authorship, or instructive purpose.