LibGuides: Primary Sources: Primary or Secondary?

Primary Sources on the Web - American History

American Memory
Provides free and open access through the Internet to written and spoken words, sound recordings, still and moving images, prints, maps, and sheet music that document the American experience.
Documenting the American South
A digital publishing initiative that provides Internet access to texts, images, and audio files related to southern history, literature, and culture. Currently DocSouth includes fourteen thematic collections of books, diaries, posters, artifacts, letters, oral history interviews, and songs.
American History from Revolution to Reconstruction and beyond
Collects more than 375 documents related to United States history from the colonial period to the present.
The Library of Congress
Access to a growing number of digitized photographs, manuscripts, maps, sound recordings, motion pictures, and books, as well as "born digital" materials such as Web sites.
The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History
The Gilder Lehrman Collection, on deposit at the New-York Historical Society, contains more than 60,000 documents detailing the political and social history of the United States. The collection's holdings include manuscript letters, diaries, maps, photographs, printed books and pamphlets ranging from 1493 through modern times.

Primary or Secondary?

For some research assignments, it is important to use primary sources, instead of or in addition to secondary sources. What’s the difference?

Primary sources are original documents or objects—first-hand information or the raw material. These original documents are often diaries, letters, memoirs, journals, speeches, or interviews. They may also include published pieces such as newspaper or magazine articles, as long as they are written soon after the fact and not as historical accounts. Eye witness accounts, photographs, audio or video recordings, research reports in the natural or social sciences, or original literary or theatrical works are also considered primary sources.

Secondary sources interpret primary sources. Secondary sources include comments on, interpretations of, or discussions about the original material. You can think of secondary sources as second-hand information. Secondary source materials can be articles in newspapers or popular magazines, book or movie reviews, or articles found in scholarly journals that evaluate or criticize someone else’s original research.

Examples of Primary and Secondary Sources

	Primary Source	Secondary Source
Art	Original artwork	Article critiquing the piece of art
History	Slave diary	Book about the Underground Railroad
Literature	Poem	Treatise on a particular genre of poetry
Political Science	Treaty	Essay on Native American land rights
Science or Social Sciences	Report of an original experiment	Review of several studies on the same topic
Theatre	Videotape of a performance	Biography of a playwright