Primary sources are firsthand pieces of evidence that pertain to a historical event. They are sources created in the time and place of the event they are describing and are written by authors of that moment in time.

Why are they useful?

Primary sources are our windows into the past as well as into the hearts and minds of people who were part of those historical moments. Through researching and analyzing these sources, we are able to witness history in the eyes of the authors who were either participants in an event or who were contemporaries writing about it.

What skills do we gain by learning how to analyze them?

Primary sources are valuable sources for any researcher tapping into history, but not necessarily because they are impeachable sources of unbiased facts. While we do use primary sources to shine a light on the nature of historical times and places, the authors of these sources had their own purposes, audiences, and importantly, biases. Analyzing these aspects of primary sources helps us understand not only the factual events of the past, but also the battling opinions and developing ideas that different people had at the time. The critical thinking skills we practice by engaging with primary source document analysis in this way are the same we must use every day in our interpretation of contemporary sources of information.

Primary Sources Come in Many Shapes and Sizes

Primary sources exist in a wide variety of formats, from personal diary entries to legal documents, and can even include certain physical objects or artifacts! Sometimes they are created by people with authority or expert knowledge like a political figure or a scholar, but often historians consult primary sources that originate from regular people. As such, primary sources tend to come in all shapes and sizes, including items and pieces of media that are very personal to the individuals who created them.

• Correspondence — This is any personal communication between people. Here are some examples you'll see, some in old modes of communication, some in new forms that will be familiar to you:
  • Letters, texts, emails, phone call transcripts or recordings, telegrams
• Newspaper and magazine articles written at the time of the event
• Diaries and journals
• Memoirs and autobiographies
• Speeches
• Interviews
• Photographs
• Zines (handmade or independently printed magazines, often used by subcultures)
• Audio/visual formats like films, music, video clips, any other audio recordings
• Manuscripts and drafts ex. From literary figures
• Government records, reports, census data
• Organization/company reports, meeting minutes, or other internal correspondence
• Maps, paintings, tools, clothing, and other objects and artifacts from the historical event

Oral History and Indigenous Knowledge

Not all primary sources are written documents. There is a lot to be learned from storytelling and historical accounts that are spoken out loud. These types of sources are often captured via audio or film recordings or they are transcribed into a text format.

Consulting oral primary sources is not only a great research strategy, but often a crucial one for certain topics. For example, in many Indigenous cultures there are elders and knowledge keepers who are the trusted authorities on the oral histories of their communities and can be cited in an academic paper as scholarly sources. Around the subject of Indigenous histories and cultures, written primary sources that appear in the historical record may be more likely to be written by outsiders sharing biased or simply uninformed observations: Ex. The historical diaries and letters written by European colonizers about Indigenous people they encountered will have a vastly limited perspective on what those Indigenous societies were actually like compared to an oral history provided by a living elder or the recording of an elder from one of those societies.

Across cultures and locations, knowledge was not always recorded in writing but was in many cases passed down from person to person, such as in formal or ceremonial acts of public storytelling. Oral histories have often been neglected in Western scholarship, but they are meaningful and legitimate avenues of learning about the past that can act as informative and credible resources in a research paper. If you are ever unsure if a source qualifies as an oral history, ask a librarian!