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• Unpublished documents: personal letters, diaries,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