WHAT ARE PRIMARY SOURCES?

Primary Sources are testimony or accounts by firsthand observers, and any relevant documents or direct evidence from that same time.

Primary sources enable the researcher to get as close as possible to what actually happened during an event or time period.  They can be richer, more personal and less dry than other kinds of information.

A primary source reflects the individual viewpoint of a participant or observer and, therefor, may be incomplete, inaccurate or biased. They must be evaluated carefully.

FORMATS AND EXAMPLES OF PRIMARY SOURCES

 
Print Materials: Audio & Visual Materials: Realia or Artifacts:
  • diaries & journals
  • speeches
  • interviews
  • letters, correspondence
  • memos, minutes, notes
  • newspaper & magazine articles
  • government documents 
  • memoirs 
  • Machine readable data files 
  • paintings, drawings, prints 
  • sculpture
  • architectural drawings 
  • advertisements, posters
  • photographs 
  • film & video
  • music
  • sound recordings
  • recorded or filmed 
  • interviews 
  • any relevant objects 
  • specimens
  • samples
  • relics 
  • clothes, household goods
  • tools
  • weapons
  • souvenirs
  • models, dioramas 
Examples Examples Examples
ship log, selectmans meeting minutes, census data, tax records, newspaper from day of Kennedy’s assassination, transcript of Martin L King’s “I had a Dream” speech movie poster, newsreel from WWII, Janis Joplin LP, photo of Abe Lincoln, videotape of Ossama bin Laden, sound recording of of Martin L King’s “I had a Dream” speech fossils, pressed flowers and plants, logger’s peavey, wooden lobster trap, army uniform, Colt 45, snow globe of World Trade Center, Queen Atlantic wood stove, USS Constitution


Reprinted Primary Sources: Some primary sources, such as diaries or letters, are one of a kind and available in only one place like a museum, archive or your grandmother’s attic. Others have been collected and published as books or films, in newspapers and magazines, or on microfilm, sometimes in many versions and over a long period of time and are much more accessible.
Primary Sources on the Internet: Increasingly, libraries are digitizing archival resources and providing access to these special collections through the Web. Many digital library collections contain excellent primary resources such as photographs, scanned images of letters or the full-text of books and journals.

WHAT ARE SECONDARY SOURCES?
A Secondary Source is a work that interprets or analyzes an event or phenomenon. It is generally at least one step removed from the event. It may be based, at least in part, on primary resources. All sources used are carefully documented so users may check up on accuracy. Most readily available sources are Secondary Sources. Textbooks and encyclopedias are two examples.

Other good examples :
A Midwife's Tale, a Pulitzer Prize winning book by historian Laurel Ulrich based on the diaries of Martha Ballard an eighteenth century Augusta, Maine.
Maine: the Pine Tree State from Prehistory to the Present edited by Richard Judd, Edwin Churchill and Joel Eastman and containing a series of scholarly essays on Maine history. 974.1 M

Most other sources fall into a third group and are sometimes called Tertiary Sources. These sources may be simply summary accounts and are less scholarly. They may be incomplete, inaccurate or biased. Sources of data and information may not be given. Use with care.

Sample Links for Maine Information and Primary Resources

For Freshman Research Reports

Government sites:

State of Maine government site • then search town or type of data

Maine State Archives

Library and link sites:

Maine INFONET • journals, periodicals and databases

Maine State Library: • services to public and link to online statewide catalogs

Maine Studies Sites • links to Maine sites on all subjects

Other Maine sites with text and image primary sources:

Davistown Museum • info on the history of hand tools and their role in the early Maine industries

Maine Memory • historical images and multimedia production tool

Northeast Historic Film • film archives

Osher Map Library, USM • map history

National primary and secondary sources:

American Memory • 7 million items: manuscripts, printed texts,sheet music, maps, motion pictures, photos & prints, recordings

Making of America (Cornell) http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/moa/
Making of America (University of Michigan) http://moa.umdl.umich.edu/
Collaborative archives of etext books and journals 1815-1925

University of Virginia Electronic Text Center

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