Primary sources are the raw materials of history — original documents and objects that were created at the time under study. They are different from secondary sources, accounts that retell, analyze, or interpret events, usually at a distance of time or place. Bringing young people into close contact with these unique, often profoundly personal, documents and objects can give them
a sense of what it was like to be alive during a long-past era. Helping students analyze primary sources can also prompt curiosity and improve critical thinking and analysis skills. Primary sources expose students to multiple perspectives on significant issues of the past and present. In analyzing primary sources, students move from concrete observations and facts to questioning and making inferences about the materials. Interacting with primary sources engages students in asking
questions, evaluating information, making inferences, and developing reasoned explanations and interpretations of events and issues. Successful student interactions with primary sources require careful primary source selections and lesson planning. Primary sources help students relate in a personal way to events of the past and promote a deeper understanding of history as a series of human events. Because primary sources are incomplete snippets of history, each one represents a mystery that students can only explore further by finding new pieces of evidence. What are primary sources?
Why teach with primary sources?
Before you begin
Engage students with primary
sources
Ask students to observe each primary source.
- Where does your eye go first?
- What do you see that you didn’t expect?
- What powerful words and ideas are expressed?
Encourage students to think about their response to the source.
- What feelings and thoughts does the primary source trigger in you?
- What questions does it raise?
Promote student inquiry
Inquiry into primary sources encourages students to wrestle with contradictions and compare multiple sources that represent differing points of view, confronting the complexity of the past.
Encourage students to speculate about each source, its creator, and its context.
- What was happening during this time period?
- What was the creator’s purpose in making this primary source?
- What does the creator do to get his or her point across?
- What was this primary source’s audience?
- What biases or stereotypes do you see?
Ask if this source agrees with other primary sources, or with what the students already know.
Assess how students apply critical thinking and analysis skills to primary sources
Primary sources are often incomplete and have little context. Students must use prior knowledge and work with multiple resources to find patterns and construct knowledge.
Questions of creator bias, purpose, and point of view may challenge students’ assumptions.
- Ask students to test their assumptions about the past.
- Ask students to find other primary or secondary sources that offer support or contradiction.
- Ask for reasons and specific evidence to support their conclusions.
- Help students identify questions for further investigation and develop strategies for how they might answer them.
Offer students opportunities to demonstrate their learning by writing an essay, delivering a speech taking a stand on an issue in the primary sources, or creating a museum display about a historical topic. For more follow-up activity ideas, take a look at the general or format-specific teacher's guides.
Sources of information are often categorized as primary or secondary depending upon their originality.
Click here //vimeo.com/scclibrary/primary-and-secondary-sources/ to view the tutorial.
Primary Sources
A primary source provides direct or firsthand evidence about an event, object, person, or work of art. Primary sources provide the original materials on which other research is based and enable students and other researchers to get as close as possible to what actually happened during a particular event or time period. Published materials can be viewed as primary resources if they come from the time period that is being discussed, and were written or produced by someone with firsthand experience of the event. Often primary sources reflect the individual viewpoint of a participant or observer. Primary sources can be written or non-written (sound, pictures, artifacts, etc.). In scientific research, primary sources present original thinking, report on discoveries, or share new information.
Examples of primary sources:
- Autobiographies and memoirs
- Diaries, personal letters, and correspondence
- Interviews, surveys, and fieldwork
- Internet communications on email, blogs, listservs, and newsgroups
- Photographs, drawings, and posters
- Works of art and literature
- Books, magazine and newspaper articles and ads published at the time
- Public opinion polls
- Speeches and oral histories
- Original documents (birth certificates, property deeds, trial transcripts)
- Research data, such as census statistics
- Official and unofficial records of organizations and government agencies
- Artifacts of all kinds, such as tools, coins, clothing, furniture, etc.
- Audio recordings, DVDs, and video recordings
- Government documents (reports, bills, proclamations, hearings, etc.)
- Patents
- Technical reports
- Scientific journal articles reporting experimental research results
Secondary Sources
Secondary sources describe, discuss, interpret, comment upon, analyze, evaluate, summarize, and process primary sources. A secondary source is generally one or more steps removed from the event or time period and are written or produced after the fact with the benefit of hindsight. Secondary sources often lack the freshness and immediacy of the original material. On occasion, secondary sources will collect, organize, and repackage primary source information to increase usability and speed of delivery, such as an online encyclopedia. Like primary sources, secondary materials can be written or non-written (sound, pictures, movies, etc.).
Examples of secondary sources:
- Bibliographies
- Biographical works
- Reference books, including dictionaries, encyclopedias, and atlases
- Articles from magazines, journals, and newspapers after the event
- Literature reviews and review articles (e.g., movie reviews, book reviews)
- History books and other popular or scholarly books
- Works of criticism and interpretation
- Commentaries and treatises
- Textbooks
- Indexes and abstracts
Primary Sources on the web:
//www.sccollege.edu/Library/Pages/Primary-Sources.aspx