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History Resources: Home - Primary vs. Secondary Sources

This page provides curriculum, materials, and information resources related to United States History.

What is a Primary Source?

WHAT IS A PRIMARY SOURCE?
DEFINITIONS FROM THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION ARCHIVES

Primary sources -

  1. First-person testimony: the account of a person who actually was present at or participated in an event.   Examples are oral history interviews, diaries, letters, photographs and drawings of events, and court testimony of an eyewitness; a document or object that was created by an individual or group as part of their daily lives. These documents are written or spoken using "I" statements, to indicate direct observation of or participation in an event.

  2. Primary source documents:  including birth certificates, photographs, diaries, letters, embroidered samplers, clothing, household implements, and newspapers.

Secondary sources - summaries, second-hand accounts, and analyses of events created by someone who did not witness the event, but may have read or heard about it.  Examples may include: books or articles written on a topic, artworks depicting an event, letters or diaries recounting a version of events told to the author by another source. 

Second person or hearsay testimony - an account repeated by someone who did not actually participate in the event.  Examples are newspaper accounts from interviews of observers, letters that repeat a story told to the writer, drawings based on other people’s observations, or a book written about a topic.

Mixed sources - A document that is a primary source may contain both first person testimony and second hand testimony.  An example would be a diary entry that records a person’s eyewitness observations of an event (first person testimony) but also contains additional stories told to the writer by a family member (second hand testimony).  Newspapers often contain a mixture of first and second hand accounts.

It may depend on the question you are asking – The same document can be a primary and secondary source, depending upon the question you ask.  For example, a Baltimore newspaper’s account of Lincoln’s death that includes unattributed accounts of what happened at Ford’s Theater contains second hand testimony, if your question is what exactly happened at Ford’s Theater that night.  But if your question is how people in Baltimore heard about Lincoln’s assassination and what did they hear, then the newspaper is a primary sources for answering that question.

Finding Primary Sources Online

When searching online for primary sources, the trick is not so much to use different search engines – you may go to many of your usual sources – but you may want and need to

adjust the construction of your search query (or terms).

          For example, if you’re looking for primary documents relating to climate change, you may enter “climate change” as a search phrase; but you might also try this construction:

  • “climate change” AND report (limit to reports, which may be primary or secondary, so be sure to check the source material), Or
  • “climate change” +*.gov (search government documents)

          When adding search terms, note that you should use a Boolean AND (in all-caps) so that the search engine knows you’re looking for these terms together – you’re not looking for the word “and.”

         Some suggested terms to add to a Google or Database search when looking for primary source documents are:

  • +diary,
  • +letter (for example: “climate change” AND letter)
  • +interview,
  • +speech,
  • +transcript (for example: “climate change” AND transcript)
  • +report,
  • +first-hand

Evaluating Primary Resources

Evaluating Primary Sources: Questions to Ask

A critical reading exercise from the Smithsonian Institution

Look at, read, and analyze your source documents carefully. 
Answer the questions listed , using evidence from the documents to support your answers.

Questions:

1. What is the URL (web address) of your Primary or Secondary source document? Note the domain type: (.com, .edu, .gov, .org, etc.).

2. What are the

    Author:
    Title, and:
    Date of publication:
for this document?

3. What type of document is this? Is this document a primary source?\

4. Why was this document created (What is its purpose?)

5. Who was the intended audience? (General public, professional peers, scholars, children, etc.)

6. What biases might the creator have had?

7. How reliable is the creator of the document? If reliable, why? If not, why not?

8. Did they actually witness the event or directly observe the person or phenomenon described?

9. Does it have first person or second hand testimony or both? (Is the evidence clear, reliable, first person or second-hand/hearsay?)

10. How does this compare to what you have learned from other sources?

Federal Government Statistics and Census Reports

Search Across Government Agencies & Databases

The U.S. government's official web portal is a useful resource for data related to Public Health and Criminal Justice.

The Master Portal to all Open US Government data. 
Here you will find data, tools, and resources to conduct research, develop web and mobile applications, design data visualizations, and more.

Public Health Data Sources

Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS)
The Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) is a CDC-run system of health-related telephone surveys that collect state data about U.S. residents regarding their health-related risk behaviors, chronic health conditions, and use of preventive services.

This site includes Occupational Outlook data on salary and benefits, wages by occupation, and employment projections.

Includes Infographics,  Data, Statistics and Tools, Research Tools and Data, Specific Populations and more. AHRQ is the health services research arm of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.  

Wide-ranging Online Data for Epidemiologic Research -- an easy-to-use, menu-driven system that makes the information resources of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) available to public health professionals and the public at large. It provides access to a wide array of public health information.

Federal Government Census information -  Topics area includes datasets organized by:
Age and Sex, Business and Economy, Education, Emergency Preparedness, Employment, Families & Living Arrangements, Geography, Health, Housing, Income & Poverty, International Trade, Migration/Geographic Mobility, Population, Population Estimates, Race, and Voting and Registration. 

Users can search across federal agencies and research agencies by subject.

The nation's principal health statistics agency provides quick and easy access to a wide range of information and data. The A-Z index is structured to provide users multiple access points to health topics, and also includes common and scientific terms.

PRB specializes in world population, health, and environmental information. Their site includes DataFinder, which is a database containing data on world variables for over 200 countries. Other research tools include data sheets, webcasts, graphic banks, and U.S. Census 2010.

This site is a collaboration of US government agencies, public health organizations and health sciences libraries. Includes sections on Health Statistics, Public Health Data Sets and Public Health Infrastructure Data. 

Criminal Justice Data Sources

BJS is the primary statistical agency of the Department of Justice. The mission of BJS is to collect, analyze, publish, and disseminate information on crime, criminal offenders, victims of crime, and the operation of justice systems at all levels of government.

According to their website: The FBI's Crime Data Explorer (CDE) aims to provide transparency, create easier access, and expand awareness of criminal, and noncriminal, law enforcement data sharing; improve accountability for law enforcement; and provide a foundation to help shape public policy with the result of a safer nation.

Links to multiple websites which contain statistical and historical data that may be useful for research purposes.

The Committee on Law and Justice’s (CLAJ) mission is to improve government decision making and public policy and promote the understanding and dissemination of research in matters involving law and justice.

This page provides users with access to the Commission's special datafiles for researchers studying federal sentencing practices through quantitative methods.

New History Resource from ProQuest: Black Freedom Struggle in the United States

ProQuest Primary Sources: The Black Freedom Struggle in the United States

Photo with link to ProQuest Black Freedom Struggle Database

This website contains over 3,000 documents focused on six different phases of Black Freedom:

  1. Slavery and the Abolitionist Movement (1790-1860)
  2. The Civil War and the Reconstruction Era (1861-1877)
  3. Jim Crow Era from 1878 to the Great Depression (1878-1932)
  4. The New Deal and World War II (1933-1945)
  5. The Civil Rights and Black Power Movements (1946-1975)
  6. The Contemporary Era (1976-2000)

The documents presented here represent a selection of primary sources available in several ProQuest databases including: American Periodicals, Black Abolitionist Papers, ProQuest History Vault, ProQuest Congressional, Supreme Court Insight and Alexander Street’s Black Thought and Culture.

Selected Primary-Source Websites (Listed Alphabetically)

Africana Age
American Historical Association
Biographical Dictionary of the United States Congress
ProQuest Black Freedom Struggle in the United States
Digital Collections in American History - Library of Congress
Includes:
Discovering American Women's History Online
Caribbean Histories Revealed
Castle Garden Immigration Center
Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers
Digital Library of the Caribbean
Digital Schomburg
Historical Documents in Foreign Relations
New-York Historical Society
New York City Municipal Archives Online Gallery
New York State Historical Literature Collection
New York State Historic Newspapers
 
New York State Military Museum and Veterans Research Center

NYPD & CRIMINAL PROSECUTION

Primary Source Sets from the Digital Public Library of America

The Pulitzer Prizes

Slavery in America

 

Transatlantic Slave Trade Database
Westchester County Archives
Yad Vashem