Information Literacy :Primary Vs Secondary

Secondary Sources

Start your research with secondary sources to learn the story.

Primary SourcesUse primary sources as the basis for interpretation.

Always make appointments to use primary source materials.

•Are accounts of the past created by people writing about events after they have happened•Are what historians (and History Day participants) create

Secondary Sources

•Books/Textbooks•Encyclopedias •Articles •Websites

Provide an introduction to a topic

Provide historical/broader context for a topic

Show how has a topic been interpreted by other historians

Provide hints on where to find primary evidence

Provide information which enables historians to make sense of primary sources

Secondary Sources

Primary Sources:Are left behind by participants or observers

Make personal connections to the past

Are evidence used by historians to support their interpretation of the past

Primary Sources:Published materials: Books (including memoirs), magazines, and newspapers contemporary to the event

Primary Sources:Unpublished materials: Diaries, letters, manuscripts

Primary Sources:Records: Government documents, census data, birth certificates, organizational minutes, business reports

Primary Sources:Images: Photographs, film, art and posters, advertisements, maps

Primary Sources:

Audio: • Oral Histories• Interviews• Recordings

Primary Sources:Artifacts: Buildings, Tombstones, Clothing

Secondary Sources - Textbookshttp://www.nysl.nysed.gov/teacherguides/strike/activity1.htm

• Classroom textbooks may be the first place you look for information about historical events, but they may not contain enough information, or present historical events in an unbiased way. That is because they are secondary sources; in other words, the authors themselves were not witnesses to all the events included in the books

Secondary Sources - Textbooks• Because textbooks must

contain a great deal of historical information, events that were important when they occurred may be described in a paragraph or two in the texts, due to space considerations.

• These questions are known in newspaper writing as the "5 Ws": who, what, when, where, why - and then, what was the result.

Primary vs. Secondary Sources• To truly research a topic or event in history, you may begin with

secondary sources to get some information, but you will need to also use primary sources, information about the topic or event from the actual time period in which the event occurred. Primary sources fall into six categories: 1. Published materials: Books (including memoirs), magazines, and newspapers

contemporary to the event2. Records: Government documents, census data, birth certificates,

organizational minutes, business reports, marriage licenses, laws, trial transcripts, deeds

3. Unpublished materials: Diaries, letters, manuscripts4. Images: Photographs, film, art and posters, advertisements, maps5. Audio: eye or ear witness accounts, such as an oral history or interview with

someone who was actually present at the time of the event, or someone's diary; interviews, recordings

6. Artifacts: physical remains, such as photographs, newspaper articles from the period, buildings, clothing,, Tombstones, etc.

Comparing Primary and Secondary Sources• In this activity, you will

compare how the Railroad Strike of 1877 (sometimes called "The Great Strike of 1877") is reported in the textbooks with several actual reports of the strike printed in an important newspaper from that time period, The Albany Argus.