Teachtopia teaches SOCIAL STUDIES

What are primary sources

What is considered a primary source?

In order to understand a primary sources, it often makes sense to first think about what a secondary source is.  An encyclopedia or modernly a Wikipedia article would be a secondar sources. The encyclopedia article of Dolores Huerta based upon photos, journals, and newspaper articles from a time period is a secondary source.  The source material itself used to create the the article (the photos, journals, and newspaper articles) are the primary sources.

What are example of primary sources?

• *books, newspapers and magazine articles (could be the text only does not have to be original content or even a photocopy)
• *photos, audio, video, movies
• *journals, invitations, letters, scrapbooks, diaries
• *speeches (transcripts and original audio/video)
• *government publications and records
• *oral histories (recorded, first hand, and transcribed)
• *documents and records of organizations
• *biographies and autobiographies
• *printed ephemera (material from a time period) example: Menus, Maps
• *artifacts, example: clothing, costumes, furniture (could be reproductions)
• *research data, example: census data, public opinion polls

Some questions to ask yourself and your students:

Why is it important to use primary sources in addition to secondary sources?

What makes secondary sources have their own unique value?