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• Primary vs. Secondary Sources | Difference & Examples

Primary vs. Secondary Sources | Difference & Examples

Published on June 20, 2018 by Raimo Streefkerk . Revised on May 31, 2023.

When you do research, you have to gather information and evidence from a variety of sources.

Primary sources provide raw information and first-hand evidence. Examples include interview transcripts, statistical data, and works of art. Primary research gives you direct access to the subject of your research.

Secondary sources provide second-hand information and commentary from other researchers. Examples include journal articles, reviews, and academic books . Thus, secondary research describes, interprets, or synthesizes primary sources.

Primary sources are more credible as evidence, but good research uses both primary and secondary sources.

Table of contents

What is a primary source, what is a secondary source, primary and secondary source examples, how to tell if a source is primary or secondary, primary vs secondary sources: which is better, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about primary and secondary sources.

A primary source is anything that gives you direct evidence about the people, events, or phenomena that you are researching. Primary sources will usually be the main objects of your analysis.

If you are researching the past, you cannot directly access it yourself, so you need primary sources that were produced at the time by participants or witnesses (e.g. letters, photographs, newspapers ).

If you are researching something current, your primary sources can either be qualitative or quantitative data that you collect yourself (e.g. through interviews , surveys , experiments ) or sources produced by people directly involved in the topic (e.g. official documents or media texts).

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A secondary source is anything that describes, interprets, evaluates, or analyzes information from primary sources. Common examples include:

• Books , articles and documentaries that synthesize information on a topic
• Synopses and descriptions of artistic works
• Encyclopedias and textbooks that summarize information and ideas
• Reviews and essays that evaluate or interpret something

When you cite a secondary source, it’s usually not to analyze it directly. Instead, you’ll probably test its arguments against new evidence or use its ideas to help formulate your own.

Examples of sources that can be primary or secondary

A secondary source can become a primary source depending on your research question . If the person, context, or technique that produced the source is the main focus of your research, it becomes a primary source.

Documentaries

If you are researching the causes of World War II, a recent documentary about the war is a secondary source . But if you are researching the filmmaking techniques used in historical documentaries, the documentary is a primary source .

Reviews and essays

If your paper is about the novels of Toni Morrison, a magazine review of one of her novels is a secondary source . But if your paper is about the critical reception of Toni Morrison’s work, the review is a primary source .

Newspaper articles

If your aim is to analyze the government’s economic policy, a newspaper article about a new policy is a secondary source . But if your aim is to analyze media coverage of economic issues, the newspaper article is a primary source .

To determine if something can be used as a primary or secondary source in your research, there are some simple questions you can ask yourself:

• Does this source come from someone directly involved in the events I’m studying (primary) or from another researcher (secondary)?
• Am I interested in evaluating the source itself (primary) or only using it for background information (secondary)?
• Does the source provide original information (primary) or does it comment upon information from other sources (secondary)?

Prevent plagiarism. Run a free check.

Most research uses both primary and secondary sources. They complement each other to help you build a convincing argument. Primary sources are more credible as evidence, but secondary sources show how your work relates to existing research. Tertiary sources are often used in the first, exploratory stage of research.

What do you use primary sources for?

Primary sources are the foundation of original research. They allow you to:

• Make new discoveries
• Provide credible evidence for your arguments
• Give authoritative information about your topic

If you don’t use any primary sources, your research may be considered unoriginal or unreliable.

What do you use secondary sources for?

Secondary sources are good for gaining a full overview of your topic and understanding how other researchers have approached it. They often synthesize a large number of primary sources that would be difficult and time-consuming to gather by yourself. They allow you to:

• Gain background information on the topic
• Support or contrast your arguments with other researchers’ ideas
• Gather information from primary sources that you can’t access directly (e.g. private letters or physical documents located elsewhere)

When you conduct a literature review or meta analysis, you can consult secondary sources to gain a thorough overview of your topic. If you want to mention a paper or study that you find cited in a secondary source, seek out the original source and cite it directly.

Remember that all primary and secondary sources must be cited to avoid plagiarism . You can use Scribbr’s free citation generator to do so!

If you want to know more about ChatGPT, AI tools , citation , and plagiarism , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

• ChatGPT vs human editor
• ChatGPT citations
• Is ChatGPT trustworthy?
• Using ChatGPT for your studies
• What is ChatGPT?
• Chicago style
• Paraphrasing

 Plagiarism

• Types of plagiarism
• Self-plagiarism
• Avoiding plagiarism
• Academic integrity
• Consequences of plagiarism
• Common knowledge

Common examples of primary sources include interview transcripts , photographs, novels, paintings, films, historical documents, and official statistics.

Anything you directly analyze or use as first-hand evidence can be a primary source, including qualitative or quantitative data that you collected yourself.

Common examples of secondary sources include academic books, journal articles , reviews, essays , and textbooks.

Anything that summarizes, evaluates or interprets primary sources can be a secondary source. If a source gives you an overview of background information or presents another researcher’s ideas on your topic, it is probably a secondary source.

To determine if a source is primary or secondary, ask yourself:

• Was the source created by someone directly involved in the events you’re studying (primary), or by another researcher (secondary)?
• Does the source provide original information (primary), or does it summarize information from other sources (secondary)?
• Are you directly analyzing the source itself (primary), or only using it for background information (secondary)?

Some types of source are nearly always primary: works of art and literature, raw statistical data, official documents and records, and personal communications (e.g. letters, interviews ). If you use one of these in your research, it is probably a primary source.

Primary sources are often considered the most credible in terms of providing evidence for your argument, as they give you direct evidence of what you are researching. However, it’s up to you to ensure the information they provide is reliable and accurate.

Always make sure to properly cite your sources to avoid plagiarism .

A fictional movie is usually a primary source. A documentary can be either primary or secondary depending on the context.

If you are directly analyzing some aspect of the movie itself – for example, the cinematography, narrative techniques, or social context – the movie is a primary source.

If you use the movie for background information or analysis about your topic – for example, to learn about a historical event or a scientific discovery – the movie is a secondary source.

Whether it’s primary or secondary, always properly cite the movie in the citation style you are using. Learn how to create an MLA movie citation or an APA movie citation .

Articles in newspapers and magazines can be primary or secondary depending on the focus of your research.

In historical studies, old articles are used as primary sources that give direct evidence about the time period. In social and communication studies, articles are used as primary sources to analyze language and social relations (for example, by conducting content analysis or discourse analysis ).

If you are not analyzing the article itself, but only using it for background information or facts about your topic, then the article is a secondary source.

Cite this Scribbr article

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Streefkerk, R. (2023, May 31). Primary vs. Secondary Sources | Difference & Examples. Scribbr. Retrieved August 30, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/working-with-sources/primary-and-secondary-sources/

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• Primary Sources
• Definitions
• Documents - Printed & Published
• Objects and Artifacts
• Sound Recordings
• Visual Materials
• Digitized Sources
• Locating Sources
• Sources By Subject
• Evaluating Sources
• Documenting Sources / Copyright
• Research Tips
• Using Archives This link opens in a new window

Primary Sources Definition

What are primary sources .

Primary sources enable the researcher to get as close as possible to the truth of what actually happened during an historical event or time period. Primary source is a term used in a number of disciplines to describe source material that is closest to the person, information, period, or idea being studied.  A primary source (also called original source ) is a document, recording, artifact, or other source of information that was created at the time under study, usually by a source with direct personal knowledge of the events being described. It serves as an original source of information about the topic.

Similar definitions are used in library science , and other areas of scholarship. In journalism, a primary source can be a person with direct knowledge of a situation, or a document created by such a person. Primary sources are distinguished from secondary sources , which cite, comment on, or build upon primary sources, though the distinction is not a sharp one.

Newspaper Research

• Historical Newspapers (ProQuest) This link opens in a new window Includes the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, LA Times, Christian Science Monitor, and more. Newspapers are in PDF format and provide a visual representation of the newspaper.
• ProQuest Central This link opens in a new window Includes both newspapers and scholarly journals
• Historical Newspapers The Guardian and The Observer Search The Guardian (1821-2003) and its sister paper, The Observer (1791-2003)
• New York Newspaper Archive This link opens in a new window Access New York Newspaper Archives and discover stories of the past with NewspaperArchive.com. The archive covers New York history from 1753-2023, with lots of content from smaller, local newspapers. Articles have been scanned as PDFs and include images and advertisements, and are full text searchable.
• America's Historical Newspapers This link opens in a new window America's Historical Newspapers includes articles from local and regional American and Hispanic American newspapers from all 50 states. Coverage dates from 1690 to the early 20th century. Articles have been scanned as PDFs and include images and advertisements, and are full text searchable.
• American Periodicals Series Online This link opens in a new window includes digitized images of the pages of American magazines and journals published from colonial days to the dawn of the 20th century, 1740-1940.
• Times Digital Archive (London) This link opens in a new window Provides full-text access to back issues of The Times newspaper. Dates of coverage: 1785 to 2006.
• Hispanic American Newspapers, 1808-1980 This link opens in a new window Hispanic American Newspapers, 1808-1980 provides access to searchable digitized copies of newspapers printed in the U.S. during the 19th and 20th centuries for a Hispanic readership. It features hundreds of monolingual and bilingual newspapers in Spanish and English, including many obscure titles from the 19th century.
• Global Newsstream This link opens in a new window Full text of 300+ U.S. and international news sources. Includes coverage of 150+ major U.S. and international newspapers such as The New York Times and the Times of London, plus hundreds of other news sources and news wires.
• Gale Newspaper Sources This link opens in a new window The Gale NewsVault is a portal to several historical collections of British newspapers and periodicals. It enables full-text searching across several titles simultaneously, including the Times of London, Financial Times, and Times Literary Supplement, along with aggregate newspaper and periodical collections covering the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries.
• Access World News This link opens in a new window Access World News provides the html full text and, for some titles, the pdf "as printed" visual representation, of articles from a variety of national and international news sources, including newspapers, digital-native news websites, television and radio transcripts, blogs, college and university newspapers, journals, magazines, and some audio and video. Most international titles are English language. Dates of coverage vary from title to title, but primarily span the late 20th century to present.

The Billy Rose Theatre Collection

TITLE: [Scene from Othello with Paul Robeson as Othello and Uta Hagen as Desdemona, Theatre Guild Production, Broadway, 1943-44]   http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Robeson_Hagen_Othello.jpg SOURCE:Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540

The Billy Rose Theatre Collection of The New York Public Library is one of the largest and most comprehensive archives devoted to the theatrical arts. This image is a work of an employee of the United States Farm Security Administration or Office of War Information domestic photographic units, created during the course of the person's official duties. As a work of the U.S. federal government, the image is in the public domain.

• Billy Rose Collection NYPL The Billy Rose Theatre Division of The New York Public Library is one of the largest and most comprehensive archives devoted to the theatrical arts.
• New York Public Library Archives & Manuscripts On this site, you can search The New York Public Library's vast holdings, initiate a research visit, submit a query to an archivist, and access digitized material. Most Broadway shows can be viewed in the special collections. You will need a NYPL library card to view them.
• ArchiveGrid This link opens in a new window Thousands of libraries, museums, and archives have contributed nearly a million collection descriptions to ArchiveGrid.
• WorldCat - FirstSearch (OCLC) This link opens in a new window Search for books and more in libraries in the U.S. and around the world. Indicates when NYU Libraries holds a copy of a book and shows you nearby libraries with holdings.
• Internet Archive Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library offering free universal access to books, movies & music, as well as 456 billion archived web pages.
• Archives Unbound This link opens in a new window NYU is currently subscribing 14 collections:African America, Communists, and the National Negro Congress; Federal Response to Radicalism; Federal Surveillance of African Americans; Feminism in Cuba - 19th through 20th century archival document; Global Missions and Theology; India from Crown Rule to Republic; Testaments to the Holocaust (Documents and Rare Printed Materials from the Wiener Library, London); The Hindu Conspiracy Cases (Activities of the Indian Independence Movement in the U.S., 1908-1933); The Indian Army and Colonial Warfare on the Frontiers of India; The International Women’s Movement (The Pan Pacific Southeast Asia Women’s Association of the USA, 1950-1985); The Middle East Online - Arab-Israeli Relations; The Middle East Online - Iraq; U.S. and Iraqi Relations: U.S. Technical Aid; and, Witchcraft in Europe.

Historical Databases

An advert for P.T. Barnum's "Feejee Mermaid" in 1842 or thereabout. Author: P. T. Barnum or an employee, Source: Newspaper advert commons.wikimedia.org/ wiki/File:Barnum_mermai... This image (or other media file) is in the public domain because its copyright has expired.

• America: History and Life with Full Text This link opens in a new window ndexes literature covering the history and culture of the United States and Canada, from prehistory to the present. The database indexes 1,700 journals and also includes citations and links to book and media reviews. Strong English-language journal coverage is balanced by an international perspective on topics and events, including abstracts in English of articles published in more than 40 languages. Publication dates of coverage: 1964 to present.
• Historical Abstracts with Full Text (EBSCO) This link opens in a new window Covers the history of the world (excluding the United States and Canada) from 1450 to the present, including world history, military history, women's history, history of education, and more. Indexes more than 1,700 academic historical journals in over 40 languages. Publication dates of coverage: 1955 to present.
• Theatre in Context Collection This link opens in a new window O’Dell’s Annals of the New York Stage, the Oxford University Press Companion series, and Greenwood’s American Theatre Companies series are just a few of the many in-copyright sources included in the Theatre in Context Collection. Placed alongside thousands of playbills, posters, photographs, and related theatrical ephemera, users will be able to paint a more comprehensive picture of the life and evolution of dramatic works.
• Black Thought and Culture This link opens in a new window Contains 1297 sources with 1100 authors, covering the non-fiction published works of leading African-Americans. Particular care has been taken to index this material so that it can be searched more thoroughly than ever before. Where possible the complete published non-fiction works are included, as well as interviews, journal articles, speeches, essays, pamphlets, letters and other fugitive material.
• Periodicals Archive Online This link opens in a new window Provides full-text and full-image access to hundreds of journals published in the arts, humanities, social sciences, and areas of general popular interest. Each periodical is covered back to its first issue, regardless of when it began publication. International in scope, PAO covers periodicals in a number of Western languages.
• Accessible Archives This link opens in a new window Includes the following collections: African American Newspapers, The Civil War Part I. A Newspaper Perspective, The Pennsylvania Genealogical Catalog, Pennsylvania Newspaper Record, South Carolina Newspapers, and The Liberator. ** Within these collections are papers such as The Charleston Mercury, The Christian Recorder, The Colored American, Douglass Monthly, Frederick, Douglass Paper, Freedom's Journal, Godey's Lady's Book, The Liberator, The National Era, The New York Herald, The North Star, The Pennsylvania Gazette, The Pennsylvania Packet, The Maryland Gazette, Provincial Freeman, Richmond Enquirer, The South Carolina Gazette, The Gazette of the State of South Carolina, The South Carolina Gazette and Country Journal, The South Carolina and American General Gazette, Weekly Advocate.
• Early English Books Online (EEBO) This link opens in a new window Early English Books Online (EEBO) contains digital facsimile page images of virtually every work printed in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and British North America and works in English printed elsewhere from 1473-1700. Searchable full text is also available for a subset of the collection.
• Eighteenth Century Journals This link opens in a new window Eighteenth Century Journals brings together rare journals printed between 1685 and 1835, primarily in the British Isles (with some publications from India, the Caribbean, and Europe). Users can view and download page images and search transcribed full text for all journals in the collection.
• C19: The 19th Century Index This link opens in a new window C19: The 19th Century Index provides bibliographic coverage of nineteenth-century books, periodicals, official documents, newspapers and archives from the English-speaking world. This database includes the Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals (1824-1900), Poole's Index to Periodical Literature, Palmer's Index to The Times, the Nineteenth Century Short Title Catalogue, and more.
• Sixties: Primary Documents and Personal Narratives 1960 - 1974 This link opens in a new window This resource consists of diaries, letters, autobiographies and other memoirs, written and oral histories, manifestos, government documents, memorabilia, and scholarly commentary. With 150,000 pages of material at completion, this searchable collection is a resource for students and scholars researching this period in American history, culture, and politics.
• African American Archives (via Fold3) This link opens in a new window This full text resource offers access to original documents that reveal a side of the African American story that few have seen before.
• African American Experience This link opens in a new window Full-text digital resource exploring the history and culture of African Americans, as well as the greater Black Diaspora. Features access to full-text content from more than 400 titles, 3,000 slave narratives, over 2000 images, 5,000 primary sources, and 250 vetted Web sites.

Letters & Diaries /Oral Histories

• Oral History Online This link opens in a new window Provides in-depth indexing to more than 2,700 collections of Oral History in English from around the world. The collection provides keyword searching of almost 281,000 pages of full-text by close to 10,000 individuals from all walks of life.
• American Civil War: Letters and Diaries This link opens in a new window This database contains 2,009 authors and approximately 100,000 pages of diaries, letters and memoirs. Includes 4,000 pages of previously unpublished manuscripts such as the letters of Amos Wood and his wife and the diary of Maryland Planter William Claytor. The collection also includes biographies, an extensive bibliography of the sources in the database, and material licensed from The Civil War Day-by-Day by E.B. Long.
• British and Irish Women's Letters and Diaries This link opens in a new window Includes 10,000 pages of diaries and letters revealing the experiences of approximately 500 women. The collection now includes primary materials spanning more than 300 years. The collection also includes biographies and an extensive annotated bibliography of the sources in the database.
• North American Immigrant Letters, Diaries and Oral Histories This link opens in a new window North American Immigrant Letters, Diaries and Oral Histories includes 2,162 authors and approximately 100,000 pages of information, so providing a unique and personal view of what it meant to immigrate to America and Canada between 1800 and 1950. Contains contemporaneous letters, diaries, oral histories, interviews, and other personal narratives.
• North American Women's Letters and Diaries This link opens in a new window North American Women's Letters and Diaries includes the immediate experiences of 1,325 women and 150,000 pages of diaries and letters.

Gale Primary Sources

• Gale Primary Sources This link opens in a new window Gale Artemis is a groundbreaking research environment that integrates formerly disparate digital collections to enable innovative research. Gale Artemis provides an unprecedented, seamless research experience that helps students find a starting point, search across a wide array of materials and points in time, and discover new ways to analyze information.

Victorian Popular Culture

• Victorian Popular Culture This link opens in a new window An essential resource for the study of popular entertainment in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This innovative portal invites users into the darkened halls, small backrooms and travelling venues that hosted everything from spectacular shows and bawdy burlesque, to the world of magic and spiritualist séances. ** The resource is divided into four self-contained sections: Moving Pictures, Optical Entertainments and the Advent of Cinema; Music Hall, Theatre and Popular Entertainment; Circuses, Sideshows and Freaks; Spiritualism, Sensation and Magic

Historical Image Collections

commons.wikimedia.org/ wiki/File:Cushman_in_Ha... , The American actress Charlotte Cushman advertised in William Shakespeare's Hamlet at the Washington Theater in 1861.  Author:Washington Theater, SOURCE:Public Library of Congress. this image (or other media file) is in the public domain because its copyright has expired.

• American Broadsides and Ephemera This link opens in a new window American Broadsides and Ephemera offers fully searchable images of approximately 15,000 broadsides printed between 1820 and 1900 and 15,000 pieces of ephemera printed between 1760 and 1900. The remarkably diverse subjects of these broadsides range from contemporary accounts of the Civil War, unusual occurrences and natural disasters to official government proclamations, tax bills and town meeting reports. Featuring many rare items, the pieces of ephemera include clipper ship sailing cards, early trade cards, bill heads, theater and music programs, stock certificates, menus and invitations documenting civic, political and private celebrations.
• Early American Imprints, Series I. Evans, 1639-1800 This link opens in a new window Search or browse the books, pamphlets, broadsides and other imprints listed in the renowned bibliography by Charles Evans.
• Early American Imprints, Series II. Shaw-Shoemaker, 1801-1819 This link opens in a new window Search or browse the books, pamphlets, broadsides and other imprints listed in the distinguished bibliography by Ralph R. Shaw and Richard H. Shoemaker. 1801-1819
• American Antiquarian Society (AAS) Historical Periodicals Collection (EBSCO) This link opens in a new window Provide digital access to the most comprehensive collection of American periodicals published between 1691 and 1877. Included digitized images of American magazines and journals never before available outside the walls of the American Antiquarian Society. The collection is available in five series: Series 1 (1691-1820) - Series 2 (1821-1837) - Series 3 (1838-1852) - Series 4 (1853-1865) - Series 5 (1866-1877)

Link to Bobst Special Collections

• NYU Special Collections Bobst Library's Special Collections department houses significant archival resources including materials from the Downtown Collection, which documents New York City's downtown arts scene from the 1970s through the early 1990s. Maria Irene Fornés and Richard Foreman are among the many artists whose materials are housed in the Downtown Collection.
• Fales It is especially strong in English literature from the middle of the 18th century to the present, documenting developments in the novel. The Downtown Collection documents the downtown New York art, performance, and literary scenes from 1975 to the present and is extremely rich in archival holdings, including extensive film and video objects.
• Tamiment One of the finest research collections in the country documenting the history of radical politics: socialism, communism, anarchism, utopian experiments, the cultural left, the New Left, and the struggle for civil rights and civil liberties.

Guide to International Collections

• SIBMAS International Directory of Performing Arts Collections and Institutions

Books Containing Primary Source Documents

• The mediaeval stage by Chambers, E. K. (Edmund Kerchever), 1866-1954 Call Number: Online versions avail.
• The Elizabethan stage by Chambers, E. K. (Edmund Kerchever), 1866-1954 Call Number: PN2589 .C4 1965 4 vol. plus online version avail
• The diary of Samuel Pepys by Pepys, Samuel, 1633-1703 Call Number: Avail. online
• A history of theatrical art in ancient and modern times. by Mantzius, Karl, 1860-1921 Call Number: PN2106 .M313 1970 4 vol. also internet access
• Ben Jonson by Ben Jonson Call Number: online access
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• Last Updated: Aug 30, 2024 11:53 AM
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Program Teachers

Getting started with primary sources.

What are primary sources?

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.

Why teach with primary sources?

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.

Before you begin

Successful student interactions with primary sources require careful primary source selections and lesson planning.

• Select one or more primary sources that support the learning objectives and are accessible to students. Consider your students' needs and interests and any logistical factors for using the item, such as legibility or copyright status. The Library of Congress Primary Source Sets for educators are a good place to start and the Free to Use and Reuse sets for more general audiences are another.
• Consider whether students will be able to identify point of view, put the items into historical context, and compare these items to other primary and secondary sources.
• Plan instruction, including activity types, time required, and whether students will work individually, in small groups, or as a whole class. Use the Primary Source Analysis Tool from the Library of Congress and select guiding questions from the teacher's guide to support students in analyzing the primary sources.

Engage students with primary sources

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.

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 .

• Healey Library
• Research Guides

Primary Sources: A Research Guide

• Primary vs. Secondary
• Historical Newspapers
• Book Collections
• Find Videos
• Open Access
• Local Archives and Archival Societies
• University Archives and Special Collections at UMass Boston

Primary Sources

Texts of laws and other original documents.

Newspaper reports, by reporters who witnessed an event or who quote people who did.

Speeches, diaries, letters and interviews - what the people involved said or wrote.

Original research.

Datasets, survey data, such as census or economic statistics.

Photographs, video, or audio that capture an event.

Secondary Sources

Secondary Sources are one step removed from primary sources, though they often quote or otherwise use primary sources. They can cover the same topic, but add a layer of interpretation and analysis. Secondary sources can include:

Most books about a topic.

Analysis or interpretation of data.

Scholarly or other articles about a topic, especially by people not directly involved.

Documentaries (though they often include photos or video portions that can be considered primary sources).

When is a Primary Source a Secondary Source?

Whether something is a primary or secondary source often depends upon the topic and its use.

A biology textbook would be considered a secondary source if in the field of biology, since it describes and interprets the science but makes no original contribution to it.

On the other hand, if the topic is science education and the history of textbooks, textbooks could be used a primary sources to look at how they have changed over time.

Examples of Primary and Secondary Sources

Adapted from Bowling Green State University, Library User Education, Primary vs. Secondary Sources .

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• Last Updated: Aug 28, 2024 9:15 AM
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Primary Sources

• Introduction
• Using primary sources
• Cross-searchable Primary Source Collections
• UK & Ireland
• Middle East
• Australasia
• Early Medieval (1410-1066)
• Medieval (1066-1485)
• Early Modern (1485-1800)
• 19th Century
• Activism and Protest
• American Indian Studies
• Art, Literature & Performing Arts
• Black History
• Colonialism & Empire
• Health and Medicine
• Maritime history
• Politics, Security & International Relations
• Popular / Mass Culture
• Religion & Philosophy
• Science & Technology
• Slavery & the Slave Trade
• Trade & Business
• Travel & Migration
• Women's History
• Newspaper archives
• Periodicals and magazines
• UoE Special Collections This link opens in a new window
• UoE Arab World Documentation Unit This link opens in a new window
• Local Archives
• National archives

Using online primary sources

• Searching for primary sources
• Critical evaluation: online collections
• Critical evaluation: sources
• Research methods primary sources
• Gale Learning Centres
• Gale Digital Scholar Lab
• Additional resources

There is a wealth of online primary source material available, and this can seem overwhelming if you are not sure where to start.

Use the guidance below to help you locate the sources you need. 

In this tutorial, you will learn how to:

- Find and access collections of online primary sources

- Locate specific primary sources using effective search strategies

• Video: Searching for online primary sources (17.23 mins) An presentation giving an overview of the topics covered in the tutorial above. (N.B. this video contains the next two videos in this list)
• Video: searching across primary source collections (3.19 mins) A brief demonstration of how to use tools which allow you to search across multiple collections of primary sources

You might start out with the basics of a concept, e.g. Women in early modern England. This video demonstrates how you might go about finding material for your topic: (5.19 mins):

Use this guide to help you find the primary sources you need. Collections are grouped by geographical region, by time period and by theme.

All of the primary source collections are also listed in the A-Z Databases list. If you know the name of the collection you want to access, you can go straight there and search for it, or find it in the alphabetical list.

Some of our individual primary source collections are just one part of a much bigger collection available from the same provider, and you can search across those collections. This can save you time and be a great help when you aren't sure where to look. See the section on cross-searchable primary source collections .

• Video: searching across primary source collections

Just as you might interrogate an individual primary source, it is also important to critically evaluate an online collection of primary sources as a whole.

You need to find out how the material has been put together, what limitations, gaps and silences might exist, and what impact this might have on your research.

The tutorial explores some of these ideas:

• records or materials may not exist or be accessible for a variety of reasons
• existing records or materials may have been subject to the selective processes and intervention of individuals (such as archivists, librarians, publishers, collectors)
• policies and procedures may affect access to primary sources

The following articles are from   Adam Matthew Digital's Research Methods Primary Sources

Shaw, M. (2021)  Critically reading the digital archive (1)

Berry, D. (2021) Ethical considerations in the archive

This tutorial explores some of the questions you should ask when critically evaluating a source, such as:

• What form does the source take?
• Who is the creator?
• What is the historical context?
• Who is missing?

All of the following are from   Adam Matthew Digital's Research Methods Primary Sources

Presnell, J. (2021) How to critically evaluate a source

Dym J. et al. (2021) Weighing sources against each other

Case studies from academics demonstrating how to evaluate different source types ; diaries, correspondence, photographs, speeches and many more. 

Find out more about how to use and critically evaluate primary sources in your research using the Adam Matthew Digital  Research Methods Primary Sources  resource.

It includes:

• Listen to academics talking about how they use primary resources in their work
• Understanding and using archives; topics such as 'Why are some sources archived and others not?, ethical considerations and under-represented voices
• Videos from experts in the field such as archivists, conservators and digitisation specialists
• Learn about different types of archives: national and regional archives, military, business, film
• Practical research guides: how to critically evaluate a source, find clues and weigh sources against each other; how to research individuals and marginal groups, how to collate data and organise your research

Over 100 case studies focusing on:

• source types: correspondence, diaries, photographs and many more different types
• themes: disability, the environment, gender, popular culture, religion, war and more
• data: case studies from scholars discussing how to find and analyse data from historical documents

Over 300 digitised items from 50 archives around the world, allowing you to practice using historical material.

Learning Centres are available for many of the Gale primary source collections, with more to be added in the future. 

Where available, a link to the Learning Centre for a particular collection will be accessible from the main toolbar, as highlighted in yellow below:

Contained in the Learning Centres are the following sections, with helpful information to make the most of using Gale's primary source collections.

Learn about the particular archive you are looking at, with sample searches and topics to help you think about how to use the archive to explore different research areas.

Search tips and strategies.

How to think critically about the sources you find, with some examples to help you compare and contrast sources.

Some guidance on citing sources, copyright and other considerations.

Use digital tools to analyse data from Gale's primary source collections.

With the Digital Scholar Hub you can:

Build content sets using the primary sources available to you via University of Exeter library. See the Gale Primary Sources collection for details of what you can use.

Make sure your texts are formatted in the way you need them to be for the analysis you want to undertake.

Use a range of digital tools to interrogate documents.

Tools available include:

• Document Clustering
• Named Entitty Recognition
• Parts of Speech
• Sentiment Analysis
• Topic Modelling
• Using Primary Sources by Jonathan Hogg and Laura Balderstone (published by Liverpool University Press and JISC)

An open access e-textbook designed to support students and teachers in the study of primary sources. Includes peer reviewed chapters by academics.

• Resources about archives  

Introductory learning tools, videos and guides

• Using archives: a guide for the inexperienced

A good starting point for anyone new to using archives

• << Previous: Introduction
• Next: Cross-searchable Primary Source Collections >>
• Last Updated: Aug 30, 2024 2:28 PM
• URL: https://libguides.exeter.ac.uk/primarysources

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Then check out some frequently asked questions:

What is APA Style?

Why use apa style in high school, how do i get started with apa style, what apa style products are available, your help wanted.

APA Style is the most common writing style used in college and career. Its purpose is to promote excellence in communication by helping writers create clear, precise, and inclusive sentences with a straightforward scholarly tone. It addresses areas of writing such as how to

• format a paper so it looks professional;
• credit other people’s words and ideas via citations and references to avoid plagiarism; and
• describe other people with dignity and respect using inclusive, bias-free language.

APA Style is primarily used in the behavioral sciences, which are subjects related to people, such as psychology, education, and nursing. It is also used by students in business, engineering, communications, and other classes. Students use it to write academic essays and research papers in high school and college, and professionals use it to conduct, report, and publish scientific research .

High school students need to learn how to write concisely, precisely, and inclusively so that they are best prepared for college and career. Here are some of the reasons educators have chosen APA Style:

• APA Style is the style of choice for the AP Capstone program, the fastest growing AP course, which requires students to conduct and report independent research.
• APA Style helps students craft written responses on standardized tests such as the SAT and ACT because it teaches students to use a direct and professional tone while avoiding redundancy and flowery language.
• Most college students choose majors that require APA Style or allow APA Style as an option. It can be overwhelming to learn APA Style all at once during the first years of college; starting APA Style instruction in high school sets students up for success.

High school students may also be interested in the TOPSS Competition for High School Psychology Students , an annual competition from the APA Teachers of Psychology in Secondary Schools for high school students to create a short video demonstrating how a psychological topic has the potential to benefit their school and/or local community and improve people’s lives.

Most people are first introduced to APA Style by reading works written in APA Style. The following guides will help with that:

Many people also write research papers or academic essays in APA Style. The following resources will help with that:

Instructors will also benefit from using the following APA Style resources:

In addition to all the free resources on this website, APA publishes several products that provide comprehensive information about APA Style:

The APA Style team is interested in developing additional resources appropriate for a beginner audience. If you have resources you would like to share, or feedback on this topic, please contact the APA Style team . 

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I have to write a research paper using primary sources. where do i start.

• What is the difference between Primary and Secondary sources?
• How do I cite primary source materials?
• What are Special Collections and Archives?
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Primary sources are created by individuals who participated in or witnessed an event and recorded that event during or immediately after the event.

Explanation:

A student activist during the war writing about protest activities has created a memoir. This would be a primary source because the information is based on her own involvement in the events she describes. Similarly, an antiwar speech is a primary source. So is the arrest record of student protesters. A newspaper editorial or article, reporting on a student demonstration is also a primary source.

Deeds, wills, court documents, military records, tax records, census records, diaries, journals, letters, account books, advertisements, newspapers, photographs, and maps are primary sources.

Secondary sources are created by someone who was either not present when the event occurred or removed from it in time. We use secondary sources for overview information, and to help familiarize ourselves with a topic and compare that topic with other events in history.

History books, encyclopedias, historical dictionaries, and academic articles are secondary sources.

If you've never written a research paper using primary sources, it is important to understand that the process is different from using only secondary sources. Many students discover that finding and gaining access to primary source documents can be difficult. The Library website has a valuable guide to locating primary source documents. Follow the link below to be redirected to that guide:

https://libguides.furman.edu/resources/primary-sources

• Students are encouraged to seek help from the Special Collections Librarian or Research Librarians to aid in their research projects. Librarians will be able to aid students in a variety of ways including helping to locate primary source materials.

After locating appropriate primary sources, it is necessary for students to analyze and interpret them. To many students, this task can seem arduous, if not overwhelming. There are many resources available in the library as well as online, which are helpful. The National Archives website has very useful analysis worksheets that can help students to determine the significance of primary source documents. Links to PDF files of these worksheets are listed below:

Written Document | Artifact | Cartoon | Map | Motion Picture | Photograph | Poster | Sound Recording

• << Previous: Archival Research
• Next: What is the difference between Primary and Secondary sources? >>
• Last Updated: May 14, 2024 2:53 PM
• URL: https://libguides.furman.edu/special-collections/for-students

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• Primary vs. Secondary Sources | Difference & Examples

Primary vs. Secondary Sources | Difference & Examples

Published on 4 September 2022 by Raimo Streefkerk . Revised on 15 May 2023.

When you do research, you have to gather information and evidence from a variety of sources.

Primary sources provide raw information and first-hand evidence. Examples include interview transcripts, statistical data, and works of art. A primary source gives you direct access to the subject of your research.

Secondary sources provide second-hand information and commentary from other researchers. Examples include journal articles, reviews, and academic books . A secondary source describes, interprets, or synthesises primary sources.

Primary sources are more credible as evidence, but good research uses both primary and secondary sources.

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Table of contents

What is a primary source, what is a secondary source, primary and secondary source examples, how to tell if a source is primary or secondary, primary vs secondary sources: which is better, frequently asked questions about primary and secondary sources.

A primary source is anything that gives you direct evidence about the people, events, or phenomena that you are researching. Primary sources will usually be the main objects of your analysis.

If you are researching the past, you cannot directly access it yourself, so you need primary sources that were produced at the time by participants or witnesses (e.g. letters, photographs, newspapers ).

If you are researching something current, your primary sources can either be qualitative or quantitative data that you collect yourself (e.g. through interviews, surveys, experiments) or sources produced by people directly involved in the topic (e.g. official documents or media texts).

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A secondary source is anything that describes, interprets, evaluates, or analyses information from primary sources. Common examples include:

• Books , articles and documentaries that synthesise information on a topic
• Synopses and descriptions of artistic works
• Encyclopaedias and textbooks that summarize information and ideas
• Reviews and essays that evaluate or interpret something

When you cite a secondary source, it’s usually not to analyse it directly. Instead, you’ll probably test its arguments against new evidence or use its ideas to help formulate your own.

Examples of sources that can be primary or secondary

A secondary source can become a primary source depending on your research question . If the person, context, or technique that produced the source is the main focus of your research, it becomes a primary source.

To determine if something can be used as a primary or secondary source in your research, there are some simple questions you can ask yourself:

• Does this source come from someone directly involved in the events I’m studying (primary) or from another researcher (secondary)?
• Am I interested in analysing the source itself (primary) or only using it for background information (secondary)?
• Does the source provide original information (primary) or does it comment upon information from other sources (secondary)?

Most research uses both primary and secondary sources. They complement each other to help you build a convincing argument. Primary sources are more credible as evidence, but secondary sources show how your work relates to existing research.

What do you use primary sources for?

Primary sources are the foundation of original research. They allow you to:

• Make new discoveries
• Provide credible evidence for your arguments
• Give authoritative information about your topic

If you don’t use any primary sources, your research may be considered unoriginal or unreliable.

What do you use secondary sources for?

Secondary sources are good for gaining a full overview of your topic and understanding how other researchers have approached it. They often synthesise a large number of primary sources that would be difficult and time-consuming to gather by yourself. They allow you to:

• Gain background information on the topic
• Support or contrast your arguments with other researchers’ ideas
• Gather information from primary sources that you can’t access directly (e.g. private letters or physical documents located elsewhere)

When you conduct a literature review , you can consult secondary sources to gain a thorough overview of your topic. If you want to mention a paper or study that you find cited in a secondary source, seek out the original source and cite it directly.

Remember that all primary and secondary sources must be cited to avoid plagiarism . You can use Scribbr’s free citation generator to do so!

Common examples of primary sources include interview transcripts , photographs, novels, paintings, films, historical documents, and official statistics.

Anything you directly analyze or use as first-hand evidence can be a primary source, including qualitative or quantitative data that you collected yourself.

Common examples of secondary sources include academic books, journal articles , reviews, essays , and textbooks.

Anything that summarizes, evaluates or interprets primary sources can be a secondary source. If a source gives you an overview of background information or presents another researcher’s ideas on your topic, it is probably a secondary source.

To determine if a source is primary or secondary, ask yourself:

• Was the source created by someone directly involved in the events you’re studying (primary), or by another researcher (secondary)?
• Does the source provide original information (primary), or does it summarize information from other sources (secondary)?
• Are you directly analyzing the source itself (primary), or only using it for background information (secondary)?

Some types of sources are nearly always primary: works of art and literature, raw statistical data, official documents and records, and personal communications (e.g. letters, interviews ). If you use one of these in your research, it is probably a primary source.

Primary sources are often considered the most credible in terms of providing evidence for your argument, as they give you direct evidence of what you are researching. However, it’s up to you to ensure the information they provide is reliable and accurate.

Always make sure to properly cite your sources to avoid plagiarism .

A fictional movie is usually a primary source. A documentary can be either primary or secondary depending on the context.

If you are directly analysing some aspect of the movie itself – for example, the cinematography, narrative techniques, or social context – the movie is a primary source.

If you use the movie for background information or analysis about your topic – for example, to learn about a historical event or a scientific discovery – the movie is a secondary source.

Whether it’s primary or secondary, always properly cite the movie in the citation style you are using. Learn how to create an MLA movie citation or an APA movie citation .

Articles in newspapers and magazines can be primary or secondary depending on the focus of your research.

In historical studies, old articles are used as primary sources that give direct evidence about the time period. In social and communication studies, articles are used as primary sources to analyse language and social relations (for example, by conducting content analysis or discourse analysis ).

If you are not analysing the article itself, but only using it for background information or facts about your topic, then the article is a secondary source.

Cite this Scribbr article

If you want to cite this source, you can copy and paste the citation or click the ‘Cite this Scribbr article’ button to automatically add the citation to our free Reference Generator.

Streefkerk, R. (2023, May 15). Primary vs. Secondary Sources | Difference & Examples. Scribbr. Retrieved 29 August 2024, from https://www.scribbr.co.uk/working-sources/primary-vs-secondary-sources/

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What Is a Primary Source?

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In research and academics, a primary source refers to information collected from sources that witnessed or experienced an event firsthand. These can be historical documents , literary texts, artistic works, experiments, journal entries, surveys, and interviews. A primary source, which is very different from a secondary source , is also called primary data.

The Library of Congress defines primary sources as "the raw materials of history—original documents and objects which were created at the time under study," in contrast to secondary sources , which are "accounts or interpretations of events created by someone without firsthand experience," ("Using Primary Sources").

Secondary sources are often meant to describe or analyze a primary source and do not give firsthand accounts; primary sources tend to provide more accurate depictions of history but are much harder to come by.

Characteristics of Primary Sources

There are a couple of factors that can qualify an artifact as a primary source. The chief characteristics of a primary source, according to Natalie Sproull, are: "(1) [B]eing present during the experience, event or time and (2) consequently being close in time with the data. This does not mean that data from primary sources are always the best data."

Sproull then goes on to remind readers that primary sources are not always more reliable than secondary sources. "Data from human sources are subject to many types of distortion because of such factors as selective recall, selective perceptions, and purposeful or nonpurposeful omission or addition of information. Thus data from primary sources are not necessarily accurate data even though they come from firsthand sources," (Sproull 1988).

Original Sources

Primary sources are often called original sources, but this is not the most accurate description because you're not always going to be dealing with original copies of primary artifacts. For this reason, "primary sources" and "original sources" should be considered separate. Here's what the authors of "Undertaking Historical Research in Literacy," from Handbook of Reading Research , have to say about this:

"The distinction also needs to be made between primary and original sources . It is by no means always necessary, and all too often it is not possible, to deal only with original sources. Printed copies of original sources, provided they have been undertaken with scrupulous care (such as the published letters of the Founding Fathers), are usually an acceptable substitute for their handwritten originals." (E. J. Monaghan and D. K. Hartman, "Undertaking Historical Research in Literacy," in Handbook of Reading Research , ed. by P. D. Pearson et al. Erlbaum, 2000)

When to Use Primary Sources

Primary sources tend to be most useful toward the beginning of your research into a topic and at the end of a claim as evidence, as Wayne Booth et al. explain in the following passage. "[Primary sources] provide the 'raw data' that you use first to test the working hypothesis and then as evidence to support your claim . In history, for example, primary sources include documents from the period or person you are studying, objects, maps, even clothing; in literature or philosophy, your main primary source is usually the text you are studying, and your data are the words on the page. In such fields, you can rarely write a research paper  without using primary sources," (Booth et al. 2008).

When to Use Secondary Sources

There is certainly a time and place for secondary sources and many situations in which these point to relevant primary sources. Secondary sources are an excellent place to start. Alison Hoagland and Gray Fitzsimmons write: "By identifying basic facts, such as year of construction, secondary sources can point the researcher to the best primary sources , such as the right tax books. In addition, a careful reading of the bibliography in a secondary source can reveal important sources the researcher might otherwise have missed," (Hoagland and Fitzsimmons 2004).

Finding and Accessing Primary Sources

As you might expect, primary sources can prove difficult to find. To find the best ones, take advantage of resources such as libraries and historical societies. "This one is entirely dependent on the assignment given and your local resources; but when included, always emphasize quality. ... Keep in mind that there are many institutions such as the Library of Congress that make primary source material freely available on the Web," (Kitchens 2012).

Methods of Collecting Primary Data

Sometimes in your research, you'll run into the problem of not being able to track down primary sources at all. When this happens, you'll want to know how to collect your own primary data; Dan O'Hair et all tell you how: "If the information you need is unavailable or hasn't yet been gathered, you'll have to gather it yourself. Four basic methods of collecting primary data are field research, content analysis, survey research, and experiments. Other methods of gathering primary data include historical research, analysis of existing statistics, ... and various forms of direct observation," (O'Hair et al. 2001).

• Booth, Wayne C., et al. The Craft of Research . 3rd ed., University of Chicago Press, 2008.
• Hoagland, Alison, and Gray Fitzsimmons. "History."  Recording Historic Structures. 2nd. ed., John Wiley & Sons, 2004.
• Kitchens, Joel D. Librarians, Historians, and New Opportunities for Discourse: A Guide for Clio's Helpers . ABC-CLIO, 2012.
• Monaghan, E. Jennifer, and Douglas K. Hartman. "Undertaking Historical Research in Literacy." Handbook of Reading Research. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2002.
• O'Hair, Dan, et al. Business Communication: A Framework for Success . South-Western College Pub., 2001.
• Sproull, Natalie L. Handbook of Research Methods: A Guide for Practitioners and Students in the Social Sciences. 2nd ed. Scarecrow Press, 1988.
• "Using Primary Sources." Library of Congress .
• Secondary Sources in Research
• Documentation in Reports and Research Papers
• Primary and Secondary Sources in History
• Definition and Examples of Primary Verbs in English
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• What Is the Genitive Case?

Finding Sources

Primary and secondary sources.

Knowing the difference between primary and secondary sources will help you determine what types of sources you may need to include in your research essay. In general, primary sources are original works (original historical documents, art works, interviews, etc.), while secondary sources contain others’ insights and writings about those primary works (scholar articles about historical documents, art works, interviews, etc.).

While many scholarly sources are secondary sources, you will sometimes be asked to find primary sources in your research. For this reason, you should understand the differences between primary, secondary, and tertiary sources.

• Primary sources allow researchers to get as close as possible to original ideas, events, and empirical research as possible. Such sources may include creative works, first hand or contemporary accounts of events, and the publication of the results of empirical observations or research. These include diaries, interviews, speeches, photographs, etc.
• Secondary sources analyze, review, or summarize information in primary resources or other secondary resources. Even sources presenting facts or descriptions about events are secondary unless they are based on direct participation or observation. These include biographies, journal articles, books, and dissertations.
• Tertiary sources provide overviews of topics by synthesizing information gathered from other resources. Tertiary resources often provide data in a convenient form or provide information with context by which to interpret it. These are often grouped together with secondary sources. They include encyclopedias and dictionaries.

Analyze your topic/working thesis to determine the types of sources that can help with support.  For example, if your topic deals with Van Gogh’s use of pale green and what it connotes in his later paintings, you will need to couple evidence from primary sources (images of the paintings themselves) with secondary sources (other scholars’ views, discussions, and logical arguments about the same topic).  If your working thesis deals with the benefits of regular exercise for older adults in their 70s-90s, you may couple evidence from primary sources (uninterpreted data from research studies, interviews with older adults or experts in the field) with secondary sources (interpretations of research studies).  In some cases, you may find that your research is mostly from secondary sources and that’s fine, depending on your topic and working thesis.  Just make sure to consider, consciously, the types of sources that can best be used to support your own ideas.

The following video provides a clear overview of primary and secondary sources.

• Primary and Secondary Sources. Revision and adaptation of the page What Are Scholarly Articles? at https://courses.lumenlearning.com/wm-englishcomposition1/chapter/text-intermediate-research-strategies/which is a revision and adaptation of the sources listed below. Authored by : Susan Oaks. Provided by : Empire State College, SUNY OER Services. Project : College Writing. License : CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
• What Are Scholarly Articles?. Provided by : Lumen Learning. Project : English Composition I. License : CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
• Primary, secondary, and tertiary sources. Provided by : Virginia Tech University Libraries. Located at : http://www.lib.vt.edu/help/research/primary-secondary-tertiary.html . License : CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
• Secondary Sources in their Natural Habitat. Authored by : Amy Guptill. Provided by : SUNY. Located at : http://pressbooks.opensuny.org/writing-in-college-from-competence-to-excellence/chapter/4/ . Project : Writing in College. License : CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
• Walk, Talk, Cook, Eat: A Guide to Using Sources. Authored by : Cynthia R. Haller. Provided by : Saylor. Located at : . Project : Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing Vol. 2. License : CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
• Scholarly Sources. Provided by : Boundless. Located at : https://www.boundless.com/writing/textbooks/boundless-writing-textbook/the-research-process-2/understanding-the-academic-context-of-your-topic-261/understanding-the-academic-context-of-your-topic-34-1667 . Project : Boundless Writing. License : CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
• image of open book. Authored by : Hermann. Provided by : Pixabay. Located at : https://pixabay.com/en/book-open-pages-library-books-408302 . License : CC0: No Rights Reserved
• video Understanding Primary & Secondary Sources. Provided by : Imagine Easy Solutions. Located at : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmno-Yfetd8 . License : Other . License Terms : Standard YouTube License

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Primary Sources and Secondary Sources

Primary Sources

When you use source material outside of your own experience, you’re using either primary or secondary sources. Primary sources are sources that were created or written during the time period in which they reference and can include things like diaries, letters, films, interviews, and even results from research studies. Secondary sources are sources that analyze primary sources in some way and include things like magazine and journal articles that analyze study results, literature, interviews, etc.

Sometimes, you’ll be conducting original research as you work to develop your argument, and your professor may encourage you to do things like conduct interviews or locate original documents. Personal interviews can be excellent sources that can help you build your ethos, pathos, and logos in your essay.

When conducting an interview for your research, it’s important to be prepared in order to make the most of your time with the person you are interviewing.

• TIPS! The following tips will help you get the most out of your interview: 
• Prepare questions you want to ask in advance.
• Be prepared with some follow up questions, just in case the questions you have prepared don’t get the interviewee talking as you had hoped.
• Have a recording device handy. It’s a good idea to record your interview if your interviewee is okay with it.
• If you can’t record the interview, come prepared to take good notes.
• Record the date of your interview, as you will need this for documentation.
• Obtain contact information for your interviewee in case you have follow-up questions later.
• Be polite and appreciative to your interviewee, as you will want the experience to be a positive one all the way around.

Secondary Sources

When you’re searching for secondary source material to support your claims, you want to keep some basic ideas in mind:

• Your source material should be relevant to your content.
• Your source material should be credible, as you want your sources to help you build your ethos.
• Your source material should be current enough to feel relevant to your audience.

Before you make your final decisions about the sources you’ll use in your argumentative essay, it’s important to review the following pages and take advantage of the helpful source credibility checklist below.

There are two versions of the checklist below. The first is a printable PDF file, and the second is an interactive PDF file. In some browsers, you may need to download or save this file to be able to utilize all of its functionality.

• Using Evidence Checklist
• Interactive Using Evidence Checklist 

This material was created by Excelsior Online Writing Lab (OWL) and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-4.0 International License . You are free to use, adapt, and/or share this material as long as you properly attribute. Please keep this information on materials you use, adapt, and/or share for attribution purposes.

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Chicago-Style Citation Quick Guide

Chicago-style source citations come in two varieties: (1) notes and bibliography and (2) author-date. If you already know which system to use, follow one of the links above to see sample citations for a variety of common sources. If you are unsure about which system to use, or how the two systems are related, read on.

Notes and Bibliography or Author-Date?

In the notes and bibliography system, sources are cited in numbered footnotes or endnotes. Each note corresponds to a raised (superscript) number in the text. Sources are also usually listed in a separate bibliography. The notes and bibliography system, Chicago’s oldest and most flexible, can accommodate a wide variety of sources, including unusual ones that don’t fit neatly into the author-date system. For this reason, it is preferred by many working in the humanities, including literature, history, and the arts.

In the author-date system, sources are briefly cited in the text, usually in parentheses, by author’s last name and year of publication. Each in-text citation matches up with an entry in a reference list, where full bibliographic information is provided. Because it credits researchers by name directly in the text while at the same time emphasizing the date of each source, the author-date system is preferred by many in the sciences and social sciences.

Aside from the use of numbered notes versus parenthetical references in the text, the two systems share the same style for authors’ names, titles of works, and other cited components. Follow the links at the top of this page to see examples of some of the more common source types cited in both systems.

Most authors choose the system used by others in their field or required by their publisher. Students should check with their instructor before deciding which system to use.

For a more comprehensive overview of Chicago’s two systems of source citation, see chapter 13 of The Chicago Manual of Style . For many more examples organized by type of source, consult chapter 14 .

21 Examples of Primary Sources (A to Z List)

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Dr. Chris Drew is the founder of the Helpful Professor. He holds a PhD in education and has published over 20 articles in scholarly journals. He is the former editor of the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education. [Image Descriptor: Photo of Chris]

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Primary sources are pieces of data directly connected to an event. Generally, the source was created at the time in which the event occurred.

A primary source is generally understood in contrast to a secondary source, which is a source that reports on and makes comments on primary sources after the fact.

Primary sources should reveal new data about something. By contrast, secondary sources simply comment on or re-examine existing data.

However, as we’ll explore, the distinction between primary and secondary sources becomes very unclear very quickly. This is because context and the scholarly field of study matter in defining something as a primary vs secondary source.

Primary Source Examples

1. artifacts (in archeology).

Artifacts in archeology are objects crafted by humans. Examples of artifacts include tools, pottery, and arrowheads that are found in excavations.

These artifacts provide new first-hand accounts of what life was like at the time. They aren’t recounts or reflections. They’re the actual physical objects from the era. They’re therefore considered primary sources for analysis.

When an artifact reveals information about the culture of the time, we call it a cultural artifact. Examples of cultural artifacts include artworks and children’s toys found in a dig.

2. Audio Recordings

Audio recordings of an event are considered primary sources. For example, recorded audio of Richard Nixon taking in the oval office during the watergate scandal is a primary source: it is literally a recording of him committing a crime.

However, audio recordings of interviews with people after the event (such as an interview that takes place 2 weeks after something has happened) could be primary or secondary, depending on the context and academic discipline.

In many cases post-event interviews are seen as secondary because they do not occur concurrent with the occasion. Hindsight and memory are too imperfect to consider this a primary source.

In other cases, audio recordings such as interviews taken after an event are most certainly primary sources. For example, interview research in social science research is generally seen as primary research (as opposed to, for example, a literature review , which is considered secondary research ).

3. Autobiographies and Memoirs

Autobiographies and memoirs are considered primary sources in instances where someone is studying the life of the writer.

In these cases, those accounts of a person by a person are direct reports that can give new insights or direct clarity about the person.

By contrast, a biography (a story written by an author about someone else) would be considered a secondary source because it is a journalistic piece written about rather than by the person.

4. Biofacts (in Archeology)

Biofacts are organic matter found in archeological excavations. They differ from artifacts because they’re not just crafted by humans; they’re actually natural objects like bones and shells.

A biofact, such as the bones of an Egyptian mummy, can reveal direct and unfiltered information about the people of the times. For example, they can give us unambiguous information about the height of humans during an era, how a human died, or whether a culture of humans in the past created jewelry out of shells.

A diary is arguably a better version of primary data than a memoir and further down the scale toward a primary source and away from a secondary source.

This is because diaries are usually written at the time of the event . They are written when the memory of things are fresh in the mind of the writer, meaning there is less fog of time and less time for memory to fade or change.

Emails are records of events that took place at the time in which they were occurring.

An email can therefore form compelling evidence that can be revealing of the thought processes of people under study. They can, for example, be produced as primary evidence during court hearings about a dispute between two people emailing one another.

Emails may become secondary sources if they are simply a typed-out opinion on an event . In this case, the opinionated email is only secondary data about the event on which a person is speaking as it’s not connected to the event directly.

7. Features (in Archeology)

In archeology, a feature is an immovable contextual piece found during an archeological survey. They help reveal information about the time and place.

Examples of features include hearths, remains of walls, and remains of firepits. They can help reveal information about the architecture of the day, how people cooked, and how large settlements were within a geographical area.

8. Government Documents

Government documents, such as records of births, deaths, and marriages, are primary sources about a time and place.

Historians look back at government documents from civilizations of the past to get information about the size of cities, the health of their citizens, and so forth.

In hundreds or thousands of years in the future, future civilizations may look at government records of today to get first-hand information about our society, as well.

9. Interviews

If you conduct an interview yourself and use it as data in a research study, then that interview is generally considered a primary source of data.

Interviews are, in fact, some of the most common ways to conduct primary research for undergraduate research students. They can be an integral part of straightforward qualitative research studies to help ease students into the world of primary research.

In some instances and by some academic standards, such as if an interview is a person’s recount of an event and you are analyzing “what happened during an event”, then it may be a secondary source.

But if the study is of “15 people’s opinions of an event”, then the interview in which they share their opinions will be a primary source.

Here, you can see that the research question (whether the focus is on the event or opinions of the event) is important in determining whether some things are primary or secondary sources.

10. Letters

A letter posted from one person to another can be a primary source for a historian looking to unveil new information about their relationship.

For example, love letters between couples separated during WWII would be compelling primary sources for a historian writing a book about soldiers and their wives during the war.

Similarly, were a biographer to find a letter of invitation for a person to attend a university, then that letter of invitation is compelling primary evidence that would confirm that they had, in fact, been accepted to study there.

11. Manuscripts

Manuscripts are the original copies of a book or essay. They can be extremely revealing of original data that took place before it had become distorted through transcriptions.

Historically, they were the original pieces written by hand before the manuscript was typed out and printed. Today, they can be the drafts written on a computer before editors requested edits.

One example of the search for the original manuscripts is the bible. The original manuscripts of many books of the bible are missing. People search out those manuscripts to find the exact original text given that meaning may have been lost over time with so much transcription over time.

Original maps, such as the maps drawn by explorers like Christopher Columbus and Captain James Cook, can reveal important first-hand information about the travels of those explorers.

These maps might be able to reveal information about what people were thinking at a certain time, their knowledge of their terrain, and even the extent of expansion of cities at certain times. 

Similarly, a map of a city from a particular year might reveal information about when some shops opened and when buildings were constructed.

13. Metadata

Metadata is data that gives contextual information about the data.

The best example is images on the internet. The image is the data, but the image file also contains information like:

• The name of the file
• When the file was created
• Where the file was created
• Who created the file
• Who owns the copyright
• A brief description of the photo (often called the alt tag)

This metadata can be extremely useful when doing forensic analysis.

For example, if detectives are trying to determine the sequence of events for a crime, they can look through phone records to identify where a person was at a certain time based on the metadata saying when, where, and to whom they made phone calls.

This metadata can help place someone at a crime scene or, alternatively, help exonerate someone from a crime by proving their alibi.

14. Newspapers and Magazine Clippings

Old magazine clippings can give us great insights into the events of the past.

When examining an event, the magazine clipping reporting on the event can be a very close proximate and contextual element worthy of first-hand analysis.

For example, magazine clippings of the days leading up to the first world war could be excellent primary sources when examining the social milieu at the time when the war began.

15. Photographs

Photographs capture an exact moment in history. Everything within the scene can give some first-hand context that we can learn from.

This primary data can be used when gathering information about the exact aftermath of an event, people’s guttural reactions (through examining facial expressions), and even the finer details of the interiors of a house. They could, similarly, reveal first-hand data about the fashion of a time.

16. Research Data

Raw research data, such as the raw data from a survey, scientific analysis, poll, or other quantitative studies, acts as a primary source.

Other examples include test results, protein and genetic sequences, audiotapes, questionnaires, and field notes.

This research data often needs to be interpreted by trained scientists and researchers. Sometimes, primary data is extremely difficult to interpret, which is why secondary sources are often necessary (i.e. sources that interpret, analyze, and present the primary data through their own studies and journalism).

17. Social Media Posts

Social media posts are some of the newest examples of primary sources that are coming back to bite people these days.

Politicians, actors, and public figures have their old social media posts scoured for embarrassing or offensive comments. These posts are presented as firm evidence of the opinions and behaviors of a person at a specific time in their lives.

18. Speeches

Famous speeches from history are regularly used as first-hand accounts of events. 

Speeches such as the Gettysburg address are transcribed and kept as the raw primary data. To this day, those speeches act as the closest accounts we can get to the exact words and thoughts of the person.

Today, a speech may be saved in audio or video form, making it an even more authoritative source.

19. Statistics

Statistics can provide objective data from a time and place. They can help us piece together history via a first-hand account taken at the time of the event.

For example, historical censuses allow us to not only know about the population data of a country at a certain time in history, but they allow us to map how fast populations have grown and make projections about population growth into the future.

One example of an early census is the Chinese census that took place in the year 2 CE. This census found that there were 57,671,400 individuals living in 12,366,470 households.

Another famous census was William the Conquerer’s census of 1086 in England, nicknamed the Doomesday Book . The purpose of this census was to determine how many people he could tax after taking over the country following the Battle of Hastings.

20. Studies and Reports

In the natural sciences, reports that deliver the findings of research data (including, most commonly, academic peer-reviewed journal articles ) are considered primary sources.

This is because the reports present findings of a first-hand study, rather than (for example) reviews of literature or syntheses of other people’s data.

Similarly, in journalism, an academic report will be considered primary data whereas a journalistic article discussing an academic report would be secondary. Therefore, journalists generally aim to find and read the original report (aka primary source) rather than citing other people who cite something.

21. Video recordings

Video of famous events can help reveal first-hand information about the event, much like photos.

An example of a video recording that can act as a primary source is CTV footage. This may be usable, for example, in the court of law, and can hold sway when convicting someone.

For videos and photographs, however, it’s important to think about what’s outside of the frame of the scene. Even a primary source needs to be examined critically.

Primary sources are generally believed to be more authoritative than secondary sources. However, they’re also very difficult to interpret, making secondary sources necessary.

Furthermore, different scholarly, academic, and journalistic traditions will have different ideas about what a primary source really is. As a result, some of the examples of primary sources in this list will not be suitable in all traditions.

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The Gale Review

A blog from Gale International

Why Use Primary Sources?

│by Pauli Kettunen, Gale Ambassador at the University of Helsinki│

Is the picture above what comes to mind when you think of an archive? Do you believe that, to find any useful information, you must spend weeks between the shelves without seeing daylight?! If so, I have good news for you – Gale Primary Sources has updated archival research to the twenty first century! You no longer have to plough through library catalogues or rummage in endless boxes to find material relevant to your research – you can do so in seconds by running a text search, just like when googling.

How do I take advantage of this miracle, I hear you say? Just find the Gale Primary Sources platform via your University Library catalogue and start browsing! If you don’t find Gale Primary Sources immediately, ask a librarian or the Gale Ambassador at your university. I promise – the Gale Primary Sources archive is at the tip of your fingertips! Depending on your University Library’s collection, you will have access to different content sets of millions of pages of primary sources, and hundreds of years of history – all available easily 24 hours a day, whenever and wherever you want to use them.

Primary Sources as a tool of critical analysis

When using primary sources, it is useful to remember the five W’s: Who, When, Where, What, and Why? These questions will help you think critically about primary source material. In Gale Primary Sources , you can easily search for material by a specific writer (Who?), and filter by the date of publication or production (When?). You can then address the other questions – What, Where and Why? – via your search queries. Very soon you will start to find sources relevant to your topic, essay or assignment, and begin to critically analyse the sources in light of these questions.

Gain extra credit with original analysis

Even if you’re basing an essay on secondary source literature, you might like to add a little flare or “spice” to your argument with contemporary accounts of your topic. For example, when I was writing about Finnish emigration to the United States during the nineteenth century, I used mainly academic papers and books. But in addition to those, I referenced relevant articles from Nineteenth Century US Newspapers which impressed my tutor and earned me credit for using and interpreting original, primary source material. I also wrote a post for The Gale Review which summarised my findings, which you can read here . (Just imagine some more academic secondary sources analysed alongside this, and you have my coursework!)

By using primary sources, you will be able to develop your own interpretations and arguments. If you are interested in early modern literature, Eighteenth Century Collections Online has plenty of novels for you to read and interpret, rather than relying on scholars’ summaries and interpretations of the text. Or perhaps you could use the Gale Digital Scholar Lab and analyse their language with powerful Digital Humanities tools. My co-ambassador last year, Rebekka, wrote a brilliant blog post about the Gale Digital Scholar Lab – check that out if you are interested in seeing some of the fascinating new ways that a large corpus of documents can be computationally analysed, opening up the possibility of exciting new conclusions.

Primary sources are relevant to many subject disciplines

Primary sources are obviously important to the study of History, but they can also be utilised in many different fields. For example, many of my fellow Gale Ambassadors study English. Textual primary sources are a great resource through which to study the evolution of language, especially when you can search the whole document for specific uses of language, as well as evolving views, reception and interpretations. For example, check out my fellow ambassador Tania Chakraborti’s great piece ‘ What is a monster? Tracking the evolution and reception of monstrosity in literature from the nineteenth century to modern day ’. Alternatively, one could study how newspaper layouts have changed over the years. The images below are front pages from 1645, 1880, and 2000. What kind of changes do you notice?

“Fake news” is not new

Due to social media, people are able spread lies and conspiracy theories faster than ever before, but people still managed to do so before the advent of the internet. It is possible to find a surprising number of hits for “fake news” from the late 1800s in Gale Primary Sources , like in this article from the Rocky Mountain News in 1897:

In fact the issue of “fake news” has been around long before the current surge in use of the term, albeit described differently. By using the Term Frequency tool (visualisation below), it can also be seen that nineteenth-century journalists favoured describing the issue as erroneous reports , as can be seen from this excerpt of the Portland Oregonian from 1898:

Even as far back as 1646 the The Kingdomes Weekly Intelligencer (a title in 17th and 18th Century Burney Newspapers Collection ) mentioned that they published for the purposes of providing people overseas with the right facts, not alternative ones. Trying to twist the public understanding of events and the reasons behind them in a particular way has always been an important part of power struggles and media reporting. This makes me wonder what kinds of methods people in ancient civilisations used to counter the spread of misinformation. Unfortunately, not even Gale can provide us with the answer to that question – not yet at least!

I’ve found discovering gems like these while browsing through the archives truly inspiring; it has often helped to motivate me and increase my passion for my subject. Hopefully this blog post has shown you how fascinating archives can be, as well as showcasing their potential to embellish your university essays with impressive content that may just boost your grades! And if at any point you need a breather from a complex research task, you can even find amusing cartoons like those below!

Blog post cover image citation: By Chris Stermitz , on Pixabay : https://pixabay.com/photos/files-ddr-archive-1633406/

About the Author

Pauli is a third-year student of Political History at the University of Helsinki, and a returning Gale Ambassador. His interests are in the Cold War era and in the development of civil society. Outside of academia Pauli likes cooking, reading, and complaining about politics.

Department of History

Primary source essay.

This 3000-word source-based essay focuses on one primary source to shed light on material evaluation in the Enlightenment. To achieve this, the essay will also draw on other primary and secondary sources.

The essay will be marked using the usual history-specific marking criteria for written work . That said, a primary-source essay is a particular type of essay that calls for specific tasks that are not relevant to all other essays.

Like any other essay, this one needs to be an argument--it needs to state a thesis and make a case for that thesis. Unlike other essays, the argument of this essay will centre on a primary source. More details on the task are below.

The thesis. This needs to be related to the theme of the module, namely material evaluation in the Enlightenment. Beyond that, you are free to choose a topic as a function of your own knowledge and interests. It may help to consider some of the theses we have encountered in the secondary readings, such as Emma Spary's thesis that botanical expertise replaced scholarly expertise as the main way of evaluating coffee in France around 1700; or William Ashworth's thesis that the hydrometer was part of the political struggle between producers and the state in eighteenth-century Britain. Your thesis will probably be less ambitious than these, given the constraints of the assignment. But you may find these theses (by Spary, Ashworth, and the other historians we have read) a useful model to follow. The note under 'Contextualise' below may also be useful.

The primary source. This may be any primary source related to material evaluation in the Enlightenment. The one limitation is that it cannot be one of the primary sources we have discussed in detail in seminars, such as Robert Boyle's 1675 article on gold assaying in the Phil. Trans ., or Henry Drax's instructions on the management of a Barbadian sugar plantation. More precisely, you cannot choose the passages from these sources that we discussed in detail in class. For example, you may choose the sections on beer in Leadbetter's Royal Gauger , but not the sections on the distillery. The source may be a written document, but it may also be an object, diagram, painting, or any other historical artefact that sheds light on the past.

Finding a primary source . One way to find the source is through a relevant secondary source. If you are interested in connoisseurship in the fine arts, for example, you might look through the Warwick library catalogue for books on this topic related to the eighteenth century. You might then find, for example, Carol Gibson-Wood's book Jonathan Richardson: Art Theorist of the English Enlightenment , which in turn discusses many relevant primary sources. Another approach is to start with the primary sources themselves by searching through collections of relevant sources. Examples are:

The online archive of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London

Early English Books Online , a database of early modern English texts

The online archive of the English East India Company

Eighteenth-century encyclopaedias, such as Chambers' Cyclopaedia , the fourth edition of which has been digitised

The catalogues of public museums, such as the Oxford Museum for the History of Science and the British Museum

Virtual exhibitions, such as the Intoxicating Spaces exhibition or the Sugar and the Visual Imagination exhibition

Analysing the primary source. Analysing primary sources is more an art than a science, and there are no hard-and-fast rules about how to do it. However, for the purpose of this essay you should do at least the following:

Interpret. Decipher the source so that it can be understood by a non-specialist audience. This may mean explaining technical terms, rephrasing complicated sentences, identifying rhetorical devices or figures of speech, or (for long texts) summarising the argument or narrative.

Explain. Get behind the source to understand its conditions of production. Who was the author? Who was the intended audience? Why, when, how, and where was the source made? Which genre does it belong to (encyclopaedia article, scientific article, merchant correspondence...) and how does it fit into the history of that genre?

Contextualise. Relate the source to wider historical developments of the kind that we have covered in the module, such as the the growth of the fiscal-military state, the growth of a consumer culture, and the outbreak of the French Revolution.

The essay could be structured around these three tasks, with one section on each - but it does not need to be. The important thing is to do these three things as part of your research, and to integrate them into your argument.

Other sources. Although the essay should be centred on one primary source, it does not need to be limited to that source. Indeed, you will need to draw on other primary and secondary sources to make sense of the primary source that you focus on. The expectation is that you will draw on five (or more) secondary sources and one (or more) additional primary sources. The secondary sources can be made of books, book chapters, journal articles, or chapters in edited collections.

Meeting with tutor. All students are strongly encouraged to meet the tutor (during office hours ) to discuss their choice of primary source. This meeting can take place any time in term 2 before the essay deadline, but should be around the time you decide upon that source.

• Source Criticism
• Source Kind and Type

Primary and secondary sources explained

Historical sources are central to your study of the past and are important to your success in History assessment pieces.

Therefore, it is of the utmost importance that you learn what they are and in what forms they come.

What is a historical 'source'?

A source is something that provides information about the historical topic you are studying.

They can either be written (e.g., books or websites), or non-written (e.g., photographs or artefacts).

No matter what you're doing in History, you will use sources.

This could be simply learning information from a textbook or website, or actually looking at ancient artefacts made in the past.

Either way, they provide information about the past and are considered 'sources of information'.

The two kinds of sources

There are two kinds of sources: primary and secondary. 

The main difference between a primary and a secondary source is when they were made.

In order to determine whether a particular source is a primary or secondary source, you need to discover its time of creation .

Primary sources

Primary sources were made during the historical period that is being investigated. 

These are often the hardest to find but, as a result, are often the strongest evidence you can use in your assessment pieces .

There are many different types of primary sources:

Watch a video explanation on the History Skills YouTube channel:

Watch on YouTube

Secondary Sources

Secondary sources were made after the time period you are investigating.  As you progress as a History student, you will start to find that some secondary sources are better than others.

As a general rule, value secondary sources that are created by scholars, as they are usually more reliable .

However, whilst m odern scholars aim to produce reliable and unbiased historical accounts, read their writings with the same critical eye as you would primary source creators.

Like primary sources, secondary sources come in different  types : 

For example

Demonstrating source kind and type in your writing:

An ancient Greek sword is a primary source because it was made at the time of the event. 

A modern website is considered to be a secondary source since it was made after the time of the events it describes.

The Gallic Wars is a firsthand, written account of Julius Caesar’s invasion of Gaul.

In a series of letters written in 1914 to the Russian Tsar, German Kaiser Wilhelm II wrote that “the responsibility for the disaster which is now threatening the whole civilised world will not lie at my door” (1914, n.p.).

Test Your Learning

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• Utility Menu

fa3d988da6f218669ec27d6b6019a0cd

A publication of the harvard college writing program.

Harvard Guide to Using Sources 

• The Honor Code

Why Use Sources?

College writing assignments generally ask you to respond in some way to sources. Some assignments will require you to consult only sources assigned in class, while others will require you to locate your own sources relevant to a specific research topic. In many of your courses, your research will focus primarily on written texts such as books and scholarly articles, but you may also be asked to consult a variety of other sources, including letters, diaries, films, works of art, data from experiments, numerical data, surveys, and transcripts of interviews.

What constitutes a useful and reliable source will vary according to both your assignment and the methods used in a particular field of study. As you approach a paper in an unfamiliar field, it will be important to remember that within each field of study, scholars distinguish between primary sources, or the raw material that they analyze as they attempt to answer a question, and secondary sources, or the analyses of that raw material done by other scholars in the field. For example, for literary scholars, primary sources include fiction and poetry, while secondary sources include criticism written by other scholars about those literary texts. Historians, on the other hand, grapple with primary sources such as letters, diaries, and eyewitness accounts produced at the time of an event, as well as with secondary sources such as arguments presented by other historians. Sociologists tend to rely for raw material on quantitative data, such as surveys, censuses, and other statistics, or qualitative data, such as observation and interviews.

Social scientists in some fields, such as psychology and economics, also consider empirical journal articles (articles that describe the results of original research) published in peer-reviewed journals to be primary sources. These articles provide raw material for other scholars, who may then raise questions about the published results or develop new research based on these results. Social scientists in other fields, such as anthropology and history, however, do not consider research articles primary sources because articles in these fields do not typically present raw data. For these social scientists, journal articles would be secondary sources. For all social scientists, literature reviews and published books are considered secondary sources.

Natural scientists consider empirical articles published in peer-reviewed journals to be primary sources. These published results of experiments and analyses of data provide the raw material for other scientists to consider as they pursue their own research. Secondary sources in the natural sciences include literature reviews and books.

As a college student taking courses in many different fields, you will need to ask questions about what is considered a reliable source in each new field, and about how sources can be used appropriately in that field. At the same time, there are many common principles for using sources effectively that you will be able to carry with you from course to course. For more information on using sources in different disciplines, you can consult the Harvard Writing Project series of writing guides for specific courses and concentrations. If you are writing a paper for a course in the Government department, you should consult GovWrites for guidance. If you are writing for an anthropology course, you should consult AnthroWrites . If you are writing for a course in one of the Life Sciences fields, you should consult ScienceWrites .

When in doubt, of course, you should always consult your instructor.

• What Are You Supposed to Do with Sources?
• Writing "Original" Papers
• Using Sources Beyond Harvard

PDFs for this Section

• Why Use Sources

• Lesson Plans
• Teacher's Guides
• Media Resources

Primary and Secondary Sources: Foundations of Historical Research

Advertisement for fugitive slave from July 1837 issue of unidentified anti-slavery publication

Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library Digital Collections

Contemporary accounts created by people who were present or intimately involved in historical events – known as primary sources – are the bedrock of historical research and writing. In order to complete the research process, historians also rely on secondary sources: well-researched scholarship written after the historical event in question.  

In this lesson plan, students will learn how to distinguish between primary and secondary sources and how to use them for historical research. The central type of primary sources used in this lesson plan are fugitive slave advertisements: short, concise, detailed, and engaging primary sources that convey the history of slavery and freedom seeking in striking terms. Once completed, students will have cultivated valuable research skills with which further historical questions can be investigated and answered.  

This resource is a product of Claiming Freedom in the Revolutionary Era – a partnership of the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom, the National Park Service, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Park Foundation, and the Greening Youth Foundation. 

Guiding questions.

Why do historians use both primary and secondary sources to understand the past? 

How are we creators of primary sources for historians 100 years from now? 

Learning Objectives

Differentiate between a primary and secondary source. 

Analyze a primary source by using a graphic organizer. 

Lesson Plan Details

A familiarity with the historical research method sparks curiosity in students and teaches them to be critical clickers as they combat misinformation on the Internet.    

The Historical Method in Three Phases 

Historians are scrupulous researchers and detailed investigators. Traditionally, historians employ what is called the historical method in three general phases.  

First, historians scour physical and digital archives in search of sources like diary entries, artifacts of clothing, first-hand interviews, or fugitive slave advertisements to obtain a solid idea of what the past was really like. These are primary sources: contemporary accounts created by people who were present or intimately involved in historical events.  

In the second phase of the historical method, historians critically read scholarly articles and books to stay up to date on how their peers have interpreted the same subject. Books and articles are two prime examples of secondary sources. They offer valuable context and fresh insight into historical events after those historical events have ended.  

Thirdly and finally, historians place it all in conversation with each other. The sources they discovered in the archive inform and are informed by the secondary source reading they have completed. The result is a more accurate and inclusive telling of the past.   

The Historical Method and the Digital World 

The same analytical habit of critically reading one’s sources can also be used by students to navigate the digital landscape—the ever evolving and full scope of information accessible through media, online, via applications and social media. Indeed, the historical method can be usefully translated by educators to help students become critical clickers . That is, students who are responsible online researchers and who are adept at distinguishing reliable information from misinformation .   

Many archives in the United States are free and publicly accessible, scholarly books are widely published, and an increasing amount of information is openly available online. But, ironically, because nearly anyone in the world can publish information on the Internet, the digital landscape can be a dangerous place to conduct historical research. With misinformation around every corner, how do historians navigate the digital landscape?  

“The very nature of information on the Internet requires a shift in the way we evaluate the credibility and worthiness of the information we encounter.”   ~ Christy Coleman , on Reframing History  

Unlike the materials one finds in the archive, the Internet is an unregulated space. Not every website found online is subject to a vetting process. So, in addition to critiquing the validity of a single document online, deciphering the veracity of online databases and repositories can be extremely tricky. But how studying historical research methods aid educators in helping students to alternate between critical reading and critical clicking ? 

Some sites are clearly trustworthy. The National Archives and Records Administration or the Library of Congress are two great examples. Just as some digitally accessible academic and government organizations are certainly reliable: articles published in the American Historical Review and the Journal of African American History, or content from the National Park Service .   

But other websites and resources trigger more skepticism. And they must be questioned on a case-by-case basis. Some questions can be answered before the researcher even clicks on a link. Upon launching a question in a search engine, historians can begin to gauge the reliability of a website. What is the ending of the URL? Is it a “.com,” “.org,” “.gov,” or a “.edu” site? But sometimes these inquiries are too superficial to separate an unreliable website from a reliable one . In our current digital age, merely confirming the author of an article or the publisher of a website is not enough to combat misinformation.  

Just like with a physical primary source, the researcher must cross-examine the website. When faced with an unknown resource, online researchers (who are also critical clickers) investigate other websites to determine whether a source is reliable. This method is known as “lateral reading.” Similarly, historians of the Underground Railroad search for plantation records or correspondence to see how a fugitive slave advertisement fits into a history of freedom seeking. The practice of cross-examination is honed through the historical research method becomes invaluable in combatting online misinformation.  

Students are sure to find other examples of how the historical research method can aid in combatting online misinformation as they work their way through this lesson plan. Indeed, one of the main goals of this lesson plan is to foster a curiosity equipped with critical clicking.   

D1.5.9-12. Determine the kinds of sources that will be helpful in answering compelling and supporting questions, taking into consideration multiple points of view represented in the sources, the types of sources available, and the potential uses of the sources. 

D2.His.11.9-12. Critique the usefulness of historical sources for a specific historical inquiry based on their maker, date, place of origin, intended audience, and purpose. 

D2.His.12.9-12. Use questions generated about multiple historical sources to pursue further inquiry and investigate additional sources. 

This lesson is designed to introduce students to primary source analysis. There are no prior concepts that students need to review before implementing this lesson plan.  

However, it may be useful for teachers to review the modeling key for activity three (below) and to read / listen to: “The Case of the Misunderstood Historical Method,” from Reframing History, produced by the American Association of State and Local History. 

Activity 1: Defining primary and secondary sources 

Begin by reading the  Understanding Primary and Secondary Sources  handout independently, in small groups, or with the entire class. This brief document uses engaging language to articulate the key differences between primary and secondary sources. It also poses some common questions that historians ask of primary and secondary sources in order to fully comprehend their value and context. A group discussion is encouraged.  

“Understanding Primary and Secondary Sources” ends with a prompt: If a historian in 2075 wanted to study classrooms in 2023, what objects around us would serve as excellent primary sources in their research? Answers may range, although some common responses might include: desks, chairs, pens, pencils, markers, projectors, lockers, worksheets, textbooks, and school uniforms. Educators then end by reiterating and emphasizing what primary sources add to an individual’s historical research. 

Activity 2: Identifying Primary Sources 

In groups of 3-4, students test their understanding of primary and secondary sources by completing the Matching Primary and Secondary Sources worksheet. In this exercise, they are tasked with correctly labeling 10 sources as either primary or secondary sources. Students will identify the specific information that helped them arrive at their answers. A key with explanations for each of the sources included in the lesson plan materials. After work time, review answers as a class and invite students to share their reasoning. 

Activity 3: Introduction to Primary Source Analysis 

The educator is supplied with two fugitive slave advertisements and is tasked with modeling for the entire class the critical thinking that goes into analyzing a primary source using a graphic organizer. The intellectual life for analyzing the first advertisement and filling in the graphic organizer should be on the educator. The educator should guide students through the second advertisement; however, students should supply the majority of the analysis. An exemplar graphic organizer with key words & phrases to model the thinking is supplied for the educator in the lesson plan materials.  

After the full-class discussion and analysis, students then transition to small groups to analyze different fugitive slave advertisements together. They will be given two to three fugitive slave advertisements observe and analyze, while also putting their thoughts into the graphic organizer. 

Prompt: You are explaining the Underground Railroad and the stories of freedom seekers to a friend. Choose three (3) primary and three (3) secondary sources from the lists below that you think would be most effective at explaining what it was. Write a three-paragraph response that explains your reasoning for choosing your primary and secondary sources. 

Materials & Media

Understanding primary and secondary sources, matching primary and secondary sources, primary source analysis, primary source analysis graphic organizer, related on edsitement, unveiling the past: analyzing primary documents on harry washington's life, lesson 2. “read all about it”: primary source reading in “chronicling america”, ask an neh expert: validating sources, visual records of a changing nation.

Educator Resources

Document Analysis

Document analysis is the first step in working with primary sources. Teach your students to think through primary source documents for contextual understanding and to extract information to make informed judgments.

Use these worksheets — for photos, written documents, artifacts, posters, maps, cartoons, videos, and sound recordings — to teach your students the process of document analysis.

Follow this progression:

Don’t stop with document analysis though. Analysis is just the foundation. Move on to activities in which students use the primary sources as historical evidence, like on DocsTeach.org .

• Meet the document.
• Observe its parts.
• Try to make sense of it.
• Use it as historical evidence.
• Once students have become familiar with using the worksheets, direct them to analyze documents as a class or in groups without the worksheets, vocalizing the four steps as they go.
• Eventually, students will internalize the procedure and be able to go through these four steps on their own every time they encounter a primary source document. Remind students to practice this same careful analysis with every primary source they see.

Worksheets for Novice or Younger Students, or Those Learning English

• Written Document
• Artifact or Object
• Sound Recording

See these Worksheets in Spanish language

Worksheets for Intermediate or Secondary Students

Worksheet for understanding perspective in primary sources - for all students and document types.

This tool helps students identify perspective in primary sources and understand how backgrounds, beliefs, and experiences shape point of view.

• Understanding Perspective in Primary Sources

Former Worksheets

These worksheets were revised in February, 2017. Please let us know if you have feedback. If you prefer the previous version of the worksheets, you can download them below .

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WWI Primary and Secondary Sources: Print and Online: Primary Sources

• Primary Sources
• Primary Sources continued
• Personal Narratives, Speeches, Papers
• Databases and Secondary Sources
• Research terms for Searching in Franklin Catalog and other Databases

Penn's World War I Digital Collections

• Penn's World War I Pamphlet Collection Penn has digitized over 400 pamphlets from its print collections dating from and relating to World War I. These pamphlets are now findable in Franklin via the series title: World War I Pamphlet Collection with live links to the facsimiles available through Hathi Trust and to Penn's Print at Penn. Access all pamphlets via the libraries Franklin catalog whether from Print at Penn or the Hathi Trust.

Connect to pamphlets via the Hathi Trust Digital Library

Connect to pamphlets via Print at Penn .

• Penn Libraries World War I Printed Media and Art Collection This collections contains over one thousand prints, propaganda posters, postcards, trench newspapers, maps, broadsides and original artworks dating from 1914 to 1931 and offers an enormous range of perspectives on the First World War.

First World War Primary Source Databases

Map From " The First World War " database collections

• The First World War This First World War portal includes primary source materials for the study of the Great War, complemented by a range of secondary features. The collection is divided into three modules: Personal Experiences, Propaganda and Recruitment, and Visual Perspectives and Narratives.
• Women, War and Society, 1914-1918 The First World War had a revolutionary and permanent impact on the personal, social and professional lives of all women. Their essential contribution to the war in Europe is fully documented in this definitive collection of primary source materials from the Imperial War Museum, London. Documents include charity and international relief reports, pamphlets, photographs, press cuttings, magazines, posters, correspondence, minutes, records, diaries, memoranda, statistics, circulars, regulations and invitation, all fully-searchable with interpretative essays from leading scholars.
• World War I and Revolution in Russia This collection documents the Russian entrance into World War I and culminates in reporting on the Revolution in Russia in 1917 and 1918. The documents consist primarily of correspondence between the British Foreign Office, various British missions and consulates in the Russian Empire and the Tsarist government and later the Provisional Government.
• Archives Unbound Browse "categories" or conduct keyword searches to find other primary source collections relevant to WW I. Interface can be very slow and might not work if you are using Firefox off campus.
• Prisoners of the First World War: ICRC Historical Archives 5 Million index cards with prisoner of war data provided by the countries at war. As of September 2014, 90% of the card have been loaded. Arrangement is by nationality rather than alphabetical by prisoner.
• World War I Document Archive This archive of primary documents from World War One has been assembled by volunteers of the World War I Military History List (WWI-L). International in focus, the archive intends to present in one location primary documents concerning the Great War.
• Times Digital Archive The Times of London 1785-2008. See a separate link for the Sunday Times
• Sunday Times Digital Archive The Sunday Times of London, 1855-2006
• New York Times Historical 1851-2010 A different perspective on world events
• German History in Documents and Images A comprehensive collection of primary source materials each of which documents Germany's political, social, and cultural history from 1500 to the present. It comprises original German texts, all of which are accompanied by new English translations, and a wide range of visual imagery. Use the timeline to select the time period 1890-1918.
• HathiTrust Digital Library Hathitrust.org brings together digitized public domain resources from libraries across the country. This is a good source for finding pamphlets, journals, magazines, and publications from the time before, during, and after the war.

Correspondence from the British Foreign Office

From World War I and the Revolution in Russia, 1914-1918"

World War I Posters

• Summons to Comradeship: World War I and World War II Posters This link takes you to Artstor and nearly 6,000 images for posters at the University of Minnesota. May require Pennkey sign in.
• World War I Posters from the University of Illinois This collection of 66 images is made available through the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA).

Journals and Newspapers

Search various newspaper archives, including the Illustrated London News,Economist, The Sunday Times, The Times, The Telegraph,  and the International Herald Tribune  Historical Archives.

Limit by "Source Type" to search historical newspapers and periodicals. Proquest Historical Newspapers includes the New York Times Historical Archive

• Times of London Digital Archive   (See Gale Primary Sources above--for a combined search with some options for visualizations)
• Economist Historical Archive   (See Gale Primary Sources above--for a combined search with some options for visualizations)
• The Times History of the War  Print volumes. Libra 940.3 T483. Coverage of the war issued in weekly installments from 1914 to 1918. 22 volumes. Volumes at Libra and available through HathiTrust
• The Times Documentary History of the War .  Print volumes. Library 940.92 T483.6. Divided into the diplomatic, naval, miltary and overseas histories.11 volumes. All 11 volumes are available through HathiTrust. 
• Belgium under German rule : the deportations . Print volume. Kislak Center Folio D615 .B48 1917 -. From the London Times , 1917.

Foreign Relations Papers

The following are resources available in Van Pelt Library.  Clicking on the links will take you to the item's catalog record in Franklin.

U.S. Foreign Relations

• Foreign Relations of the United States : Official documentary history of foreign policy decisions from the U.S. State Department's Office of the Historian.

British Foreign Relations

• British Documents on the Origins of the War, 1898-1914 : 11 volumes. Available through Hein Online, Hathitrust and Libra
• British and Foreign State Papers , 1812-1968 : 170 volumes all available through HeinOnline
• British Documents on Foreign Affairs: Reports and Papers from the Foreign Office Confidential Print. Series H, The First World War, 1914-1918 : 12 volumes. Available through a variety of print and online editions.

Russian Foreign Relations

• Russia in War and Revolution, 1914-1922: A Documentary History

French Foreign Relations

• Les Origines de la Guerre et la Politique Extérieure de l'Allemagne au Début du XXe Siècle d'Après les Documents Diplomatiques
• Documents Diplomatiques français (1871-1914)  41 volumes. Most volumes available through Hathitrust

German Foreign Relations

• German War Planning, 1891-1914: Sources and Interpretations

WWI Histories

French WWI poster courtesy of the Library of Congress.

War Records

• War Trade Board journal

Official rulings and announcements of the War Trade Board and its Bureaus, from 1917-1919.

23 volumes.

• History of the Great War, based on official documents, by direction of the Historical section of the Committee of Imperial defence : medical services 

Covers such topics as casualties and statistics, surgery, diseases and pathology.

• The medical department of the United States Army in the World War

Large, multi-volume series covering all aspects of medical services during World War I.

15 volumes.

• World War records; First Division, A.E.F., Regular

Records on military regiments, including operations, field orders and training.

25 volumes.

• Diplomatic documents relating to the outbreak of the European war

Correspondences and primary sources at the outbreak of the war.

• La Paix de Versailles

Conditions of the Treaty of Versailles, in French.

12 Volumes. Online through Gallica and in print at Van Pelt

• United States Army in the World War, 1917-1919

A series on the organization, policies, training and operations. Also contains reports.

17 volumes.

Economic and Social History of the World War Series

This series published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Division of Economics and History, provides a detailed account of the expense and consequences of the war to all countries involved. Listed below are the series and their call number. volumes may be in storage at Libra or in Van Pelt. Try the following search to bring up all volumes: economic and social history of the world war and author carnegie. If you have difficulty finding the volumes you are looking for, please ask for assistance. (Print and Hathitrust)

Subsets of the series:

World War I Document Archive

An online resource to support use of primary documents, the World War I Archive is an electronic repository of primary documents from World War One, which has been assembled by volunteers of the World War I Military History List (WWI-L). International in focus, the archive intends to present in one location primary documents concerning the Great War. It includes biographical material, convention and treaty documents, links to other WW I sites, documents available through H-net, and other resources.

• Next: Primary Sources continued >>
• Last Updated: Jun 25, 2023 3:29 PM
• URL: https://guides.library.upenn.edu/WorldWarI

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Why the Kamala Harris of Four Years Ago Could Haunt Her in 2024

She ran to the left as progressive ideas dominated the last competitive Democratic primary. Now, in a tough general election, Republicans are digging up her old stances.

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By Reid J. Epstein

Reporting from Washington

When she ran for president the first time, Kamala Harris darted to the left as she fought for attention from the Democratic Party’s liberal wing.

After she dropped out , social and racial justice protests swept across the country in the summer of 2020, and Ms. Harris joined other Democrats in supporting progressive ideas during what appeared to be a national realignment on criminal justice.

One presidential cycle later, with Vice President Harris less than a week into another race for the White House, video clips of her old statements and interviews are being weaponized as Republicans aim to define her as a left-wing radical who is out of step with swing voters.

Former President Donald J. Trump is calling out her past positions and statements at his rallies, and on Monday his campaign began reserving time for television advertisements that are likely to resurface videos of Ms. Harris.

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Telecom company agrees to $1M fine over Biden deepfake

A telecom company has agreed to pay a $1 million fine for its role in the deepfake robocall that impersonated President Joe Biden’s voice ahead of the New Hampshire Democratic primary, federal authorities plan to announce Wednesday. 

Lingo Telecom, a voice service provider that distributed the artificial intelligence-generated robocalls through “spoofed” phone numbers, will pay the seven-figure penalty and agreed to stricter oversight protocols, in what federal authorities call a first-of-its-kind enforcement action against malicious deepfakes, or AI-driven impersonations of others.

“Every one of us deserves to know that the voice on the line is exactly who they claim to be,”  Federal Communications Commission Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said in a statement. “If AI is being used, that should be made clear to any consumer, citizen, and voter who encounters it.”

The robocall employed an AI-generated impersonation of Biden’s voice, which told New Hampshire voters not to vote in January's Democratic primary.

As first uncovered by NBC News , the call was orchestrated by longtime political consultant Steve Kramer, who at the time was working for a rival campaign, though Kramer says he did it as a stunt to raise awareness about the danger of deepfakes. Kramer and his then-employer, Rep. Dean Phillips, D-Minn., insist no one on the campaign directed Kramer or was even aware of his actions.

Kramer is separately facing a $6 million fine from the FCC, as well as 26 criminal counts of voter intimidation and impersonating officials in New Hampshire. He is currently out on bail.

He is also facing a civil lawsuit brought by the League of Women Voters. The U.S. Department of Justice threw its weight behind the suit last month.  

“Voter intimidation, whether carried out in person or by way of deepfake robocalls, online disinformation campaigns, or other AI-fueled tactics, can stand as a real barrier for voters seeking to exercise their voice in our democracy,” said Kristen Clarke, the head of the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, in a statement.

The Biden robocall was the first use of a deepfake in national American politics, so authorities said they moved quickly and aggressively to deter political deepfakes, which have grown rampant in some other countries .

"By holding Lingo Telecom accountable for its role in transmitting the spoofed robocalls carrying AI-generated messages, the FCC is sending a strong message that election interference and deceptive technology will not be tolerated," said New Hampshire Attorney General John Formella in a statement.

Alex Seitz-Wald is a senior political reporter for NBC News.

Kamala Harris has put the Democrats back in the race