DR. MELISSA JORDINE

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF HISTORYCALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, FRESNO

Primary and Secondary Sources

Outline of Presentation

Methods and Skills of History: A Practical Guide that can be adapted for students at different grade levels

Classifying sourcesChallenges for studentsProviding context and thinking about other

aspects of primary sourcesHistory Day Topic for this year and specific

suggestions for sources students can use and how to classify them For audio, click on

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Third Edition is the most recent: you can use or adapt exercises

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Methods & Skills: Chapter 9

I can e-mail you a pdf file consisting of the first half of Chapter 9, if you or a teacher who could not attend today are interested.

This chapter begins with an interesting story about how identity was established in the 16th century and uses this story to point out that “evidence” can be problematic. The chapter focuses on the issues of identifying and analyzing sources and stresses the importance of corroborating evidence in History.

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Methods & Skills: Chapter 9

Introduces the following concepts: 1)Bias 2) Specialized information that might be needed or changes in the meaning of words over time 3) Informed Common Sense

#3 is problematic: If I were to say that Otto von Bismarck could not leave the house because the door was closed, your common sense would reject this statement although it is absolutely true.

(The Otto in this specific case is a Dachshund and not the German Chancellor responsible for Unification)

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Primary Sources

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Primary source: (Methods and Skills)

-- An artifact or source created during the time period under study.

-- A first-hand or eyewitness account by a person who observed or participated in the event being studied; implies that all individuals living during the time period in which an event occurs are primary sources

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Books and ArticlesFor audio, click here

Secondary Source (Methods & Skills)

An account written after the events have taken place, by someone who did not observe or participate in the event. Most secondary sources do not just describe but also analyze and/or interpret the event. The best secondary sources use primary sources as a basis for their inquiry, and as evidence for their key points or argument, but also consult all relevant secondary sources.

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Definitions are relatively good . . .

However, the idea that anyone living during a particular period is a primary source for events that occur during that period has produced considerable debate among historians who are not in complete agreement about this issue.

Is George Washington a primary source in regard to the British treatment of American prisoners of war?

Is someone who watched, on live television, the Berlin Wall being torn down a primary source?

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Keep in Mind: Historians never classify or analyze sources in a vacuum

Black Hole

Source (s)

Source (s) Source (s)

Historical Question

Inquiry about the past

Herodotus and other Historians

Not Historians

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Key points about sources that students need to be actively taught:

Format: letter, book, article etc. does not determine whether a source is primary or secondary

Historical inquiry or specific focus/question determines whether a source is primary, secondary, or both

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Key points & Students

Primary Sources are not inherently more accurate or unbiased than secondary sources

Sources can lie or omit key points; individuals can be biased and thus write “facts” that they believe are true such as that women are incapable of understanding concepts in math and science.

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Key points and students

No one source can tell us about an event; historians use multiple sources preferably from different perspectives

Historians go back and forth between secondary and primary sources and review dozens of sources before reaching any, even tentative, conclusions

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Using sources in class:

A) explain to students what they are doing and what they are not doing (how what they are doing differs from an in-depth historical inquiry)

B) provide necessary background or context in some form (lecture, reading assigned as homework, brief excerpt reviewed in class)

C) use secondary and primary sources and choose carefully (some sources are more “exciting” but less relevant to the topic For audio, click on

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Sources that are difficult for students to classify:

Works with a narrative and primary sources located in the back of the book

Sources that include statistics, quotes, and extensive information from primary sources

Sources that provide an introduction or context before letters, interviews, or excerpts from memoirs

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Other Issues

Archival Sources:

Often in classroom exercises only one or two sources from a much larger number of relevant works are used and this is problematic.

Also, truly understanding the context of such sources requires in-depth research to use them effectively. For audio, click on

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Other Issues:

Stephen Ambrose is a prominent U.S. historian who claimed to have interviewed Eisenhower for hundreds of hours and whose many works influenced scholarship on Eisenhower and key issues. Recently archivists and historians have uncovered evidence that seem to indicate he falsified information and only interviewed Eisenhower for about five hours total.

“Ambrose on Eisenhower: The Impact of a Single Faulty Quotation” by Ira Chernus. Link to this article: http://www.hnn.us/articles/126636.htmlFor audio, click on

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History Day Theme:

Debate and Diplomacy in History Incredible opportunity for students to do research

using foreign diplomatic papers. Students can use Documents on British foreign policy

or on U.S. foreign policy However, students can also use volumes (translated

into English) containing documents on German Foreign Policy, Austrian Foreign policy, Soviet Foreign Policy; all available at Henry Madden Library on the Fresno State campus.

Students will have access to a far broader range of primary sources for a vast number of topics for History Day this year. For audio, click on

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History Day Projects & Classifying Sources

In addition to the usual rules distinguishing primary and secondary, there are two additional points:

Volumes of documents on Foreign Policy should be listed as primary sources, even if there is some background information or commentary.

If a student is using only the background information or commentary in a volume that has primary sources, than the source would be classified as secondary for the purposes of their paper. For audio, click on

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Volumes of Primary Source Documents

If a student is using both commentary and/or background information and using primary sources contained in one book or volume than they should indicate this in the first footnote (after citing the source in correct Turabian format) and state that all subsequent footnotes will indicate whether the information being cited is primary or secondary in parentheses at the end of the citation.

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