Secondary Sources are one step removed from primary sources, though they often quote or otherwise use primary sources. Documentaries (though they often include photos or video portions that can be considered primary sources).

Photographs are a very common type of primary source. They can serve to document: events or relationships in a person’s life.

Primary sources are firsthand accounts or direct evidence of an event or period under study. These types of sources include, but are not limited to, letters, interviews, photographs, and cultural artifacts such as coins, everyday objects, and works of art.

Since its ‘invention’ in the 1830s, photographs have been used as sources of evidence. The direct (indexical) relationship between the sun’s rays and the resulting image makes photographs seem reliable as sources of information. Photographs are very persuasive since they look so much like the things photographed.

Demonstrative Evidence

Photographs are very useful types of primary sources. They provide a rare glimpse of a particular second in time, which will never again be repeated. This is especially true for events that occurred before the development of television or digital technologies.

OBSERVE: Identify and note details

1. What type of image is this (photo, painting, illustration, poster, etc.)?
2. What do you notice first?
3. What’s happening in the image?
4. What people and objects are shown?
5. What is the physical setting?
6. What, if any, words do you see?

These sites may produce primary visual information….

1. Getty Images. Online database of historical images.
2. LIFE Magazine Image Database. Photographs that appeared in LIFE Magazine.
3. New York Public Library Picture Collection Online.
4. Perseus Digital Library.
5. Prints and Photographs Online Catalog.

A primary source provides direct or firsthand evidence about an event, object, person, or work of art. Published materials can be viewed as primary resources if they come from the time period that is being discussed, and were written or produced by someone with firsthand experience of the event.

Arthur Marwick says “Primary sources are absolutely fundamental to history.” Ideally, a historian will use all available primary sources that were created by the people involved at the time being studied. In practice, some sources have been destroyed, while others are not available for research.

Primary sources are first-hand accounts of an event. Primary sources may include newspaper articles, letters, diaries, interviews, laws, reports of government commissions, and many other types of documents.

A primary source is a work that was created or written contemporary with the period or subject being studied. Secondary sources analyze or interpret historical events or creative works. A primary source is an original document containing firsthand information about a topic.

However, research problems are of three types: descriptive (pertains to issues which need studying), relational (research questions which focus on the relationship between two or more factors), and causal research (problems that look at cause and effect).

Components of research problem

• An individual or a group with some difficulty or problem.
• Objectives of research that are to be attained.
• The environment in which the problem exists.
• Two or more course of action or Alternative means for obtaining the objective.
• Two or more possible Outcomes.
• Objective of the study.