A SECONDARY SOURCE interprets and analyzes primary sources. Some types of seconday sources include: PUBLICATIONS: Textbooks, magazine articles, histories, criticisms, commentaries, encyclopedias.

Secondary sources are based on or about the primary sources. For example, articles and books in which authors interpret data from another research team’s experiment or archival footage of an event are usually considered secondary sources. For example, textbooks and reference books are tertiary sources.

Examples of secondary sources include many books, textbooks, and scholarly review articles. Tertiary sources compile and summarize mostly secondary sources. Examples might include reference publications such as encyclopedias, bibliographies or handbooks.

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 synthesizes primary sources.

Primary sources are direct from an event or original source, such as the Declaration of Independence, and secondary sources are anything written about something that isn’t the primary account of whatever the source is referencing, such as textbooks discussing the Declaration.

Some examples of primary source formats include: archives and manuscript material. photographs, audio recordings, video recordings, films. journals, letters and diaries.

Primary Sources. 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.

Primary sources are documents, images or artifacts that provide firsthand testimony or direct evidence concerning an historical topic under research investigation. Primary sources are original documents created or experienced contemporaneously with the event being researched.

6 Free Online Resources for Primary Source Documents

1. National Archives. The National Archives is a fantastic resource.
2. DocsTeach. Also run by the National Archives, DocsTeach is full of activities for educators.
3. Spartacus Educational.
4. Fordham University.
5. The Avalon Project.
6. Life Magazine Photo Archive.
7. Easy iPad Access.

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.

A primary source is an original document or other material that has not been changed in any way. Usually it was produced by someone with direct personal knowledge of the events that are described. It is used as an original source of information about the topic. Primary sources are distinguished from secondary sources.

How do Primary and Secondary Sources differ? While primary sources are the original records created by firsthand witnesses of an event, secondary sources are documents, texts, images, and objects about an event created by someone who typically referenced the primary sources for their information.

The four primary sources are constitutions, statutes, cases, and regulations. These laws and rules are issued by official bodies from the three branches of government.

Examples of secondary sources include:

• journal articles that comment on or analyse research.
• textbooks.
• dictionaries and encyclopaedias.
• books that interpret, analyse.
• political commentary.
• biographies.
• dissertations.
• newspaper editorial/opinion pieces.

Secondary data refers to data that is collected by someone other than the primary user. Common sources of secondary data for social science include censuses, information collected by government departments, organizational records and data that was originally collected for other research purposes.

Examples of Tertiary Sources: Dictionaries/encyclopedias (may also be secondary), almanacs, fact books, Wikipedia, bibliographies (may also be secondary), directories, guidebooks, manuals, handbooks, and textbooks (may be secondary), indexing and abstracting sources.

A website that linked to other interviews, photographs, news reports, and stories from 9/11 would be a tertiary source.

Tertiary sources include almanacs, chronologies, dictionaries and encyclopedias, directories, guidebooks, indexes, abstracts, manuals, and textbooks. Tertiary source materials may include: dictionaries. encyclopedias.

Indexes, bibliographies, concordances, and databases may not provide much textual information, but as aggregates of primary and secondary sources, they are often considered tertiary sources.

Examples include: Commentaries, criticisms. Dictionaries, Encyclopedias (also considered tertiary) Histories.

Secondary sources are interpretations and analyses based on primary sources. For example, an autobiography is a primary source while a biography is 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.

Data from an experiment is a primary source. For example, articles and books in which authors interpret data from another research team’s experiment or archival footage of an event are usually considered secondary sources. Tertiary sources are one further step removed from that.

1 : of third rank, importance, or value. 2a : involving or resulting from the substitution of three atoms or groups a tertiary salt. b : being or containing a carbon atom having bonds to three other carbon atoms an acid containing a tertiary carbon.