FINDING PRIMARY & SECONDARY SOURCES

What are primary sources?

Primary sources enable the researcher to get as close as possible to the truth of what actually happened during either an historical event or a current event. Primary sources are the evidence written or created by participants or observers. The following are generally considered primary sources:

• Diaries, journals, speeches, interviews, letters, memos, manuscripts and other papers in which individuals describe events in which they were participants or observers.

• Memoirs and autobiographies. These are generally less reliable since they are usually written long after events occurred and may be distorted by bias, dimming memory or the revised perspective that may come with hindsight. On the other hand, they are sometimes the only source for certain information.

• Records of organizations and agencies of government. The minutes, reports, correspondence, etc. of an organization or agency serve as an ongoing record of the activity and thinking of that organization or agency. Many kinds of records (births, deaths, marriages; permits and licenses issued; census data; etc.) document conditions in the society.

• Published materials (books, magazine and journal articles, newspaper articles) written at the time about a particular event. While these are sometimes accounts by participants, in most cases they are written by journalists or other observers. The important thing is to distinguish between material written at the time of an event as a kind of report, and material written much later, as historical analysis.

• Photographs, audio recordings, moving pictures or video recordings documenting actual events.

• Artifacts of all kinds: physical objects, buildings, furniture, tools, appliances and household items, clothing, toys.

• Research reports in the sciences and social sciences. Especially for recent social history, the best evidence of broad developments in society is often in the form of social science surveys or research studies. This research may be reported in book form, government reports or most commonly in articles published in scholarly journals.

• If you are attempting to find evidence documenting the mentality or psychology of a time or of a group (evidence of a world view, a set of attitudes, or the popular understanding of an event or condition), the most obvious source is public opinion polls taken at the time. Since these are generally very limited in availability and in what they reveal, however, it is also possible to make use of ideas and images conveyed in the mass media, and even in literature, film, popular fiction, self-help literature, textbooks, etc. Again, the point is to use these sources, written or produced at the time, as evidence of how people were thinking.

What are secondary sources?

Secondary sources are works that interpret or analyze an historical event or phenomenon. They are  generally at least one step removed from the event. A recent article that evaluates and analyzes the relationship between the feminist movement and the labor movement in turn-of-the-century England is an example of a secondary source; if you were to look at the bibliography of this article you would see that the authors research was based on both primary sources such as labor union documents, speeches and personal letters as well as other secondary sources. Encyclopedias and textbooks are also examples of secondary sources.