Definitions and Characteristics

Primary Sources are items that are directly associated with their producer or user and the time period in which they were created, or as memiors or recollections years after the event. Examples include diaries, newspaper articles, government documents, clothing, photographs, oral interviews, business records, and news broadcasts.

Secondary Sources are analyses and interpretations of primary sources and other sources, which can include other secondary sources such as books as well as tertiary sources such as encyclopedia articles and full-length histories.

 

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Types of Primary Sources

Public Records	Governments since biblical times have been in the business of keeping a myriad of records in order to define their populations, create policies and procedures, and otherwise maintain civil order. Census Records, court records, and tax records are all examples of public records.
Official Records	To operate, governments have laws and guidelines, the documentation of which become valuable official records that provide a wealth of information. Examples of these kinds of records include laws, civil codes, legislative hearings, statistics, treaties, and military records.
Personal Documents	Individuals generate amazing amounts of documentation that can teach us a great deal about their lives and societies. Diaries, letters, email correspondence, oral histories, financial records, household accounts, and financial statements are all incredibly rich research sources.
Artifacts	There is a physical side to human existence and much can be learned about thought and culture by studying the things that humans use, consume, and produce. Examples include furniture, paintings, tools, machines, clothing, firearms, music, and art.
Business and Organizational Documents	Corporations and other organizations produce materials that document their activities, as well as the role and identity of their workers, members, constituents, and clients. Shipping manifests, inventories, financial records, meeting minutes, and production schedules can all be helpful research tools.
Images	Photographs and video images are valuable records of events as they occurred, although the viewpoint of the person behind the camera needs to be taken into careful consideration.
Architecture	There is a great deal to be learned from the style of buildings as well as a city’s physical layout. Documents that provide this kind of information include photographs, city plans, blueprints, house drawings, house plans, and maps.
Media and other public/audiovisual communication	News and its path of communication have certainly changed over time, but its significance as a primary source has not. Individuals’ constant need and desire to “know,” coupled with the need of governments and commercial interests to disseminate information has produced vast amounts of fertile material to study including newspapers, magazines, learned societies’ publications, television news broadcasts, broadsides, and radio broadcasts.
Literary texts	The text of a novel is also a primary source. Written in a specific time and place, it often reflects the culture and thought or the antithesis of the culture and thought of that era, even if the novel is set in another time period. Historians sometimes combine popular novels with some of the other primary source material listed above in their research

Tutorials on Using Primary Sources

• Using Primary Sources on the Web (RUSA) http://www.lib.washington.edu/subject/History/RUSA/
• Primary Sources: Lesson Plans American Memory http://memory.loc.gov/learn/start/prim_sources.html
• Yale University Primary Sources http://www.library.yale.edu/instruction/primsource.html
• History Matters: Making Sense of Evidence http://historymatters.gmu.edu/browse/makesense/
• How to Read a Primary Source (from Reading, Writing, and Researching for History by Patrick Rael at Bowdoin College) http://academic.bowdoin.edu/WritingGuides/primaries.htm

 

Questions To Ask About Primary Sources

1. What types of primary materials might have been produced? Remember to think both about printed materials such as documents as well as physical representations of culture such as art work and architecture.
2. Who would have produced these primary sources?
3. Who would have used and or critiqued these primary sources?
4. When would these primary sources have been produced?
5. Would these primary sources have been published, unpublished, or represented in another form (an audiotape of an interview, for instance)?