Module 2 - Selecting Sources - What about Primary Resources?

A primary source records an event by a witness to that event, without interpretation. Primary sources can include:

• Diaries, journals, memoirs and autobiographies
• Speeches, interviews, letters and manuscripts
• Documents, opinion polls and research data
• Photographs, audio and video recordings and artifacts

A secondary source is a description of an event based on the viewpoint of another. Secondary sources can include:

• Biographies
• Encyclopedias
• Essays
• Anthologies
• Books and articles that interpret other works or research

Sometimes it is difficult to distinguish whether a source is primary or secondary. A collection of speeches, reprinted in a book format, is still a primary source because the text of the speeches is unaltered. However, a book published as a commentary on those same speeches is a secondary source because it is an interpretation of the original.

Increasingly, many primary sources are being digitized and made available on the Web. Take a look at American Memory or National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).