PRIMARY VS. SECONDARY SOURCE

TOPIC 1 - RPH

HISTORY

the word comes from historia (Ancient Greek: ἱστορία, romanized: historíā, lit. 'inquiry, knowledge from inquiry, or judge').

HISTOR

this word means learned or wise man

SOURSE

a person, publication, or object that gives information

PRIMARY SOURCE

first hand information

not made or coming from something else; original

coming directly from the original source

PRIMARY SOURCE

• Diary / Journal Entries

• Letters

• Memoirs

• Journals

• Speeches

• Interviews

• Official Records

• Minutes Reports

• Artworks

• Artifacts

• Newspapers or magazines (as long as they were written soon after the events and not as historical accounts)

SECONDARY SOURCE

coming from or creating using an original source

Secondhand - not original; taken from someone or something else

SECONDARY SOURCE

• Published Works (Journals and articles)

• Reviews

• Books

• Conference Papers

• Documentaries

• Biographies - an account of someone's life written by someone else.

• Dictionary

• Encyclopedia

• Magazines and Newspapers (News Article)

LOUIS GOTTSCHALK

emphasized that historians can't avoid using secondary sources due to difficulty in accessing primary sources. Most often, historians depend on secondary sources to improve their background knowledge of contemporary documents and detect any errors they may contain.