Libraries, archives, media, and the internet all provide information which helps us to find out what happened in the past. Since what happened in the past may help us to make decisions now or in the future, we need accurate information that is based on evidence. Evidence is information that tells if something is true or not. One way to organize evidence and information is to divide it into primary and secondary sources. What makes an object a primary source or a secondary source often depends on how you use it.

Primary and secondary sources, when used together, help us to understand people, ideas and events from the past.

Primary Sources

People use original, first-hand accounts as building blocks to create stories from the past. These accounts are called primary sources, because they are the first evidence of something happening, or being thought or said.

Primary sources are created at the time of an event, or very soon after something has happened. These sources are often rare or one-of-a-kind. However, some primary sources can also exist in many copies, if they were popular and widely available at the time that they were created.

All of the following can be primary sources: diaries, video and film, sound recordings, interviews, newspapers, magazines, published first-hand accounts or stories, letters, photographs, art, and maps.

Secondary Sources

Second-hand, published accounts are called secondary sources. They are called secondary sources because they are created after primary sources and they often use or talk about primary sources. Secondary sources can give additional opinions (sometimes called bias) on a past event or on a primary source. Secondary sources often have many copies, found in libraries, schools or homes.

All of the following can be secondary sources, if they tell of an event that happened a while ago: History textbooks, biographies, published stories, movies of historical events, art, and music recordings.