Primary and Secondary Sources

In using information in history courses, one of the first distinctions must be able to make is that between primary sources and secondary ones. The basic definitions are simple, but in practice, students sometimes have trouble distinguishing them .The following definitions can help students learn the difference.

Primary Sources: Sources about an event in the past that are contemporary with the event being studied and have some connection with it.

Secondary Sources: Information about an event in the past, written after the time concerned, which may use primary sources.

Sources Exercise

For each of the following, indicate whether it is primary (P) or secondary (S), not a source used in history at all (N) or either, depending on its use (E):

_____A Civil War Soldier’s coat button

_____An article in Time magazine commemorating an important historical event

_____President Eisenhower’s memoirs

_____Your history textbook

_____A Roman coin

_____ A 1941 copy of the San Francisco Chronicle describing Chinese immigration in the 1880s

_____ A plow from the 1890s

_____A letter from a schoolteacher on the frontier describing the school curriculum

_____A photograph taken on the University of California campus during a 1964 demonstration

_____Your Grandmother’s wedding ring

_____The report of the Congressional Committee investigating the Watergate scandal

Answers:

P S P S P E P P P P P

Using Primary Sources in History

For this exercise, each student in the class should have an example of a primary source. This exercise is best done after completing the first exercise. As it is unlikely that a sufficient number of manuscript or other original materials will be available, it is assumed that students will be working with copies or photographs; however, it is useful to use original materials if at all possible. The mix can include photographs from historic periods, portraits or other paintings, maps, advertisements and artifacts, as well as more conventional documents. A good mixture will help students understand the concept of the primary source in history

Part I. The primary sources are distributed with no label or identification. Students are to use their skills to discover as much as possible about what they have been given. A good way to begin is for each to answer the following questions:

What is it? (a photograph, a letter, a document, money)

From what approximate time does it date?

For what purpose was it created?

For what group or audience was it created?

Describe the details of the source as closely as possible.

Students will have various problems answering these questions, and one effective way to work with the sources is to give each student about 5-10 minutes to answer these questions and then ask each to report to the class on his source and what answers he has come up with. All students can be invited to participate in identifying the source. The exercise can end with the instructor identifying the sources, or can lead to a further assignment:

Students are asked to design a research question or problem using the primary source they have. They are to go to the library and find five more primary sources that could also be a part of the research project they have designed. The final question of this exercise is to get students to understand what their sources can be used for in creating history.