Secondary vs Primary
***Note: there
is often a grey area between these categories, so exercise your
judgment and critical thinking in evaluating your information sources.Secondary Sources- Secondary sources are books or articles written about a topic using primary sources.
- Secondary sources interpret original documents that give you background information about the topic you want to research.
- Examples
of secondary sources are: articles, dictionaries, encyclopedias,
textbooks and books that interpret or review research works.
Primary Sources- A primary source is first hand evidence. It was there at the time of an event. It is contemporary to the period being studied.
- Examples
of primary sources are: speeches, letters, comics/cartoons, songs,
legislation, court decisions, journals/diaries, interviews, artifacts,
autobiographies, statistics, experiments, and photographs.
Here's a real life example of primary and secondary sources:
Suppose
there had been an accident. The description of the which a witness
gives to the police is a PRIMARY SOURCE because it comes from someone
actually there at the time. The story in the newspaper
the next day is a SECONDARY SOURCE because the reporter who wrote the
story did not actually witness it. the reporter is presenting a way of
understanding the accident or giving an interpretation.
*From the North Park University, History Department |
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