1.
Primary Sources -- Week 14
For this discussion thread, we will find a primary source. See instructions, links and lists of
primary source documents. This is fairly straightforward; we want to find a primary source, and
answer the questions about the source below.
Find a primary source, and answer the following questions about it:
1. What type of primary source is it?
2. Why is it a primary source?
3. Who created this item?
4. When was it created and why?
5. What does it tell you about an event?
Finding a source: The Internet provides a rich source of primary documents, from
museums, educational institutions, and other sources. Consult the links below for a source.
Also, you can complete a google search: topic primary source to find one.
Some suggestions: photographs, diary, letters are often used as primary sources
Other types of primary sources: include speeches, autobiographies, video recordings, films.
Some primary sources that are more unusual: internet communications (email, blogs, Twitter,
Facebook) Corporate records are considered primary sources as are proceedings of meetings,
conferences. Presidential speeches are collected in Presidential Libraries as primary sources as
are any documents from specific presidencies.
Newspaper articles: can be either a primary or secondary source. Newspaper articles
written at the time are considered primary sources (a news article about the Civil War, would
be a primary source representative of the time period. A news article yesterday reporting
second hand on the events of the Syrian War, would not be)
Primary sources types
See below the list from Week 12. Also refer to the more comprehensive information from UC
Irvine below.
• Interviews
• Diaries
• Letters
• Autobiographies
• Novel or poem
• Photographs/recordings of TV shows/radio programs or speeches
See link for USC for more complete list [very comprehensive)
http://libguides.usc.edu/writingguide/primarysources
The College Student’s Research Companion, p. 26.
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2.
Primary Sources -- Week 14
Links for Primary Sources:
National Archives - Finding Primary Resources
https://www.archives.gov/education/research/primary-sources
Edutopia Primary Source Documents
https://www.edutopia.org/blog/online-resources-primary-source-documents-monica-burns
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Social Media sources as primary documents: See the linked articles below about social media
as a primary source. If you are interested in exploring this aspect, you’ll examine facebook,
twitter or other social media for accounts of events – recent news events can be a source of first-
person accounts [just make sure your source is a first-person account, not a second hand report]
Social Media as primary sources:
https://blogs.loc.gov/kluge/2015/07/preserving-social-media-for-future-historians/
http://er.educause.edu/articles/2013/12/social-media-as-a-primary-source-a-coming-of-age