Most research uses both primary and secondary sources. They complement each other to help you build a convincing argument. Primary sources are more credible as evidence, but secondary sources show how your work relates to existing research.

The use of primary sources exposes students to important historical concepts. First, students become aware that all written history reflects an author’s interpretation of past events. Second, through primary sources the students directly touch the lives of people in the past.

For example, an autobiography is a primary source while a biography is a secondary source. Typical secondary sources include: Scholarly Journal Articles. Use these and books exclusively for writing Literature Reviews.

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.

Examples of a primary source are: Original documents such as diaries, speeches, manuscripts, letters, interviews, records, eyewitness accounts, autobiographies. Empirical scholarly works such as research articles, clinical reports, case studies, dissertations. Creative works such as poetry, music, video, photography.

third stage

Both primary and secondary sources are useful and can help you learn about the past. In the strictest definition, primary sources are usually considered to be items like personal letters, diaries, records or other documents created during the period under study.

Knowing the difference between primary and secondary sources will help you determine what types of sources you may need to include in your research essay.

Secondary sources are works that analyze, assess or interpret an historical event, era, or phenomenon, generally utilizing primary sources to do so. Secondary sources often offer a review or a critique. Secondary sources can include books, journal articles, speeches, reviews, research reports, and more.

Primary sources help students develop knowledge, skills, and analytical abilities. When dealing directly with primary sources, students engage in asking questions, thinking critically, making intelligent inferences, and developing reasoned explanations and interpretations of events and issues in the past and present.

How to Analyze a Primary Source

• Look at the physical nature of your source.
• Think about the purpose of the source.
• How does the author try to get the message across?
• What do you know about the author?
• Who constituted the intended audience?
• What can a careful reading of the text (even if it is an object) tell you?

Historians rely upon these sources to get the perspectives of people who participated in historical events. Primary sources help historians and students relate to events of the past. These sources help students develop the skills, knowledge, and critical thinking needed to interpret them.

The primary sources can be of great help to the historian if he has acquire thorough knowledge of the background through the study of secondary sources, i.e. the works of the great and important historians of the proposed area and period of research.