Primary Source Documents

What Are They and

What Do You Do With Them?

Primary sources defined

• Primary sources are actual records that have survived from the past, such as letters, diaries, photographs, and articles of

clothing.

• They are also government documents, oral recordings, maps, reports, artifacts, coins, stamps, journals, novels, and short stories.

What’s the purpose?

• Primary sources provide a historical record.

Do YOU Create Historical Records?

• Think about everything you’ve done in the past 24 hrs.

• List as many of these activities as you can remember.

• For each activity on the list, write down what evidence, if any, your activities might have left behind.

Review Your History

• Which of your daily activities are most likely to leave trace evidence behind?

• What, if any, of the evidence might be preserved for the future?

• What might be left out? Why?

For the Public Record

• What kinds of evidence might this leave behind?

• Who records information about this event?

• For what purpose are different records of this event made?

Types of Primary Sources

• Published documents: books, magazines, government documents, reports, literature, advertisements, maps, pamphlets, posters, laws, and court decisions

• Unpublished documents: personal letters, diaries, journals, wills, deeds, family Bibles, report cards, financial ledgers, board meeting minutes, research and development files, membership lists, census records, tax and voter lists, classified documents.

Other Types of Primary Sources

• Oral Histories• Visual Documents• Artifacts

Analyzing Primary Sources

• Time and place rule:– The closer in time and place a source and its

creator were to an event in the past, the better the source will be.

• Bias rule:– Every source is biased in some way because the

creator is recording what he thought happened or wants someone to think happened.

Questions for Analyzing Primary Sources

• Who created the source and why?• Did the recorder have firsthand knowledge of the

event?• Was the recorder a neutral party?• Did the recorder produce the source for personal use?• Was the source meant to be public?• Did the recorder wish to inform or persuade others?• Was the information recorded during the event?

Sources

• http://memory.loc.gov