Primary vs. Secondary Sources A Quick Refresher

Secondary Sources Start your research with secondary sources. They help familiarize you with your topic and can direct your focus in useful ways. Secondary sources give context. Secondary sources are accounts of the past created by people writing about events after they have happened (years after they have happened). Secondary sources are what historians create. Examples: Books/textbooks, encyclopedias, articles, websites with generalized information (Wikipedia, History.com, etc.)

Secondary Sources… Provide an introduction to a topic. Provide historical/broader context for a topic Show how a topic has been interpreted by other historians Provide hints on where to find primary sources/evidence (mine the bibliographies/footnotes for sources you might also use!) Provide information which enables historians to make sense of primary sources

Secondary Sources: Textbooks Classroom textbooks or encyclopedias may be one of the first places you look for information about historical events, but they may not contain enough information, or present historical events in an unbiased way. That is because they are secondary sources; in other words, the authors themselves were not witnesses to all the events included in the books. In most cases, they have also made decisions about what information to include or exclude, which will impact their interpretation and presentation of their material and argument.

Primary Sources Are left behind by participants or observers Make personal connections to the past Are evidence used by historians to support their interpretation of the past. There are 6 main categories we can consider in thinking about primary sources: Published materials Records Unpublished materials Images Audio/Video Artifacts

Primary Sources Published materials: Books (including memoirs), magazines, and newspapers contemporary to the event (newspapers from around the time period you are studying)

Primary Sources Unpublished Materials: Diaries, letters, manuscripts

Primary Sources Records: Government documents, census data, birth certificates, organizational minutes, business reports

Primary Sources Images: Photographs, film, art and posters, advertisements, maps

Primary Sources Audio: Oral Histories, Interviews, Recordings

Primary Sources Artifacts: Buildings, tombstones, clothing

Questions to Ask (With Any Source): Who created the source? What is their background? What are their qualifications? Who is the intended audience? What kinds of bias (intentional and unintentional) may exist within this source? In what ways, and to what extent, do I need to account for that bias? In what ways might this source have been influenced by the context in which it was created? What is happening under the surface?