PRIMARY VS. SECONDARY SOURCES

Primary Sources  Primary Sources: objects or documents created during the time period you are studying

Examples of Primary Sources  Newspapers  Letters  Photographs  Paintings  Maps  Diaries  Journals  Artifacts  Recordings  Court records  Legal Documents

Advantages of Primary Sources  Historians like using primary sources because they give us eye-witness accounts of what happened during the time period  They were created by people who were actually there

Disadvantages of Primary Sources  Very valuable to historians, but there are a couple of problems:  Sometimes the vocabulary is hard to understand  Sometimes they are biased  they only give you one side of the story

Secondary Sources  Secondary sources: created after the time period you are studying  Created by someone who was NOT an eye- witness to the event

Examples of Secondary Sources  Textbooks  Encyclopedias  Internet Sites  Historical fiction ...and many more

Advantages of Secondary Sources  Historians create secondary sources after looking at many primary sources  They are valuable to historians because they collect the information from primary sources in one place  They are usually not as biased as primary sources

Disadvantages of Secondary Sources  People who create secondary sources were not there when the events happened  Information can sometimes be skewed or distorted (not accurate). In other words, sometimes information may not depict the actual occurrence or event 100% accurately