Academics
What is a Primary Source?
Primary sources are original records created at the time historical events occurred. Memoirs and oral histories produced many years after these events are also considered to be primary sources. A primary source provides a first hand account of an historical event and is valued in historical research for the insight it may provide to times past. Some examples of primary sources are:
- letters, journals, or diaries
- manuscripts
- newspapers or news film footage
- speeches or interviews
- memoirs or autobiographies
- government documents produced by Congress or the President such as laws, minutes of meetings, transcriptions or recordings of conversations
- photographs
- audio recordings, video recordings, or films
- research data
- artifacts such as works of art including paintings, sculpture, fiction
- memorabilia, antiques, clothing, relics, jewelry, pottery, buildings
Examples of Primary Sources:
- Diary of Anne Frank – experience of Jews in World War II
- The Declaration of Independence – U.S. History
- Arrowheads and pottery – American Indian History
Primary Sources on the Web
- American Memory: Historical Collections for the National Digital Library
[http://memory.loc.gov/] - Avalon Project: Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy
[http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/avalon.htm] - Calisphere: A World of Primary Sources and More
[http://www.calisphere.universityofcalifornia.edu] - EuroDocs: Western European Primary Historical Documents
[http://library.byu.edu/~rdh/eurodocs/] - Gallica: Digital Library of the National Library of France
[http://gallica.bnf.fr/] - Making of America: 19th c. books and magazines
[http://moa.umdl.umich.edu/] - Internet Medieval Sourcebook: Full text sources compiled by P. Halsall at Fordham.
- Repositories of Primary Research: Developed by the T. Abraham at the University of Idaho [http://www.uidaho.edu/special-collections/Other.Repositories.html]
How does a secondary source differ from a primary source?
A secondary source interprets and analyzes primary sources. Secondary sources are one step removed from the event. Examples include a book about the effects of World War I written years later by a historian; a journal article which interprets another scientist’s experiment or medical research; a biography of an author, actress, or scholar. Some types of secondary sources are book reviews, histories, literary criticism, and encyclopedias.
Maintained by Marilyn Scoville