Primary sources

What are primary sources?

A primary source is a record left by a person (or group) who participated in or witnessed the events you are studying or who provided a contemporary expression of the ideas or values of the period under examination.

Examples of primary sources include letters, autobiographies, diaries, government documents, minutes of meetings, newspapers, or books written about your topic at that time. Non-written sources include interviews, films, photos, recordings of music, clothing, buildings, or tools from the period.

How to read a primary source

Good reading is about asking questions of your sources. Keep the following in mind when reading primary sources. Even if you believe you can't arrive at the answers, imagining possible answers will aid your comprehension. Reading primary sources requires that you use your historical imagination. This process is all about your willingness and ability to ask questions of the material, imagine possible answers, and explain your reasoning.

As a historian, you will want to ask:

  • What can I know of the past based on this material?
  • How can I be sure about it?
  • How do I know these things?

Evaluating primary source texts: An acronym that may help guide your evaluation of primary source texts is PAPER.

  • Purpose and motives of the author
  • Argument and strategy she or he uses to achieve those goals
  • Presuppositions and values (in the text, and our own)
  • Epistemology (evaluating truth content)
  • Relate to other texts (compare and contrast)

Ask the questions that come under each of these headings.

  • Who is the author and what is her or his place in society (explain why you are justified in thinking so)?
  • What could or might it be, based on the text, and why?
  • What is at stake for the author in this text?
  • Why do you think she or he wrote it?
  • What evidence in the text tells you this?
  • Does the author have a thesis? What is that thesis?

  • How does the text make its case?
  • What is its strategy for accomplishing its goal? How does it carry out this strategy?
  • What is the intended audience of the text? How might this influence its rhetorical strategy?
  • What arguments or concerns does the author respond to that are not clearly stated?
  • Do you think the author is credible and reliable?

  • How do the ideas and values in the source differ from the ideas and values of our age?
  • What presumptions and preconceptions do you as a reader bring to bear on this text? For instance, what portions of the text might you find objectionable, but which contemporaries might have found acceptable?
  • How might the difference between our values and the values of the author influence the way you understand the text?

  • How might this text support one of the arguments found in secondary sources you've read?
  • What kinds of information does this text tell you without knowing it's telling you?

Now choose another of the readings, and compare the two, answering these questions:

  • What patterns or ideas are repeated throughout the readings?
  • What major differences appear in them?
  • Which do you find more reliable and credible?

Here are some additional concepts that will help you evaluate primary source texts:

Texts and documents, authors and creators:

You'll see these phrases a lot. I use the first two and the last two as synonyms. Texts are historical documents, authors their creators, and vice versa. "Texts" and "authors" are often used when discussing literature, while "documents" and "creators" are more familiar to historians.

Evaluating the veracity (truthfulness) of texts:

For the rest of this discussion, consider the example of a soldier who committed atrocities against non-combatants during wartime. Later in his life, he writes a memoir that neglects to mention his role in these atrocities, and may in fact blame them on someone else. Knowing the soldier's possible motive, we would be right to question the veracity of his account.

The credible vs. the reliable text:

  • Reliability refers to our ability to trust the consistency of the author's account of the truth. A reliable text displays a pattern of verifiable truth-telling that tends to render the unverifiable parts of the text true. For instance, the soldier above may prove to be utterly reliable in detailing the campaigns he participated in during the war, as evidenced by corroborating records. The only gap in his reliability may be the omission of details about the atrocities he committed.
  • Credibility refers to our ability to trust the author's account of the truth on the basis of her or his tone and reliability. An author who is inconsistently truthful -- such as the soldier in the example above -- loses credibility. There are many other ways authors undermine their credibility. Most frequently, they convey in their tone that they are not neutral (see below). For example, the soldier above may intersperse throughout his reliable account of campaign details vehement and racist attacks against his old enemy. Such attacks signal readers that he may have an interest in not portraying the past accurately, and hence may undermine his credibility, regardless of his reliability.

An author who seems quite credible may be utterly unreliable. The author who takes a measured, reasoned tone and anticipates counter-arguments may seem to be very credible, when in fact he presents us with complete fiction. Similarly, a reliable author may not always seem credible. It should also be clear that individual texts themselves may have portions that are more reliable and credible than others.

The neutral text:

We often wonder if the author of a text has an "ax to grind" which might render her or his words unreliable.

  • Neutrality refers to the stake an author has in a text. In the example of the soldier who committed wartime atrocities, the author seems to have had a considerable stake in his memoir, which was to expunge his own guilt. In an utterly neutral document, the creator is not aware that she or he has any special stake in the construction and content of the document.
  • No texts are ever completely neutral. People generally do not go to the trouble to record their thoughts unless they have a purpose or design which renders them invested in the process of creating the text. Some historical texts, such as birth records, may appear to be more neutral than others, because their creators seem to have had less of a stake in creating them. (For instance, the county clerk who signed several thousand birth certificates likely had less of a stake in creating an individual birth certificate than did a celebrity recording her life in a diary for future publication as a memoir.) Sometimes the stake the author has is the most interesting part of a document.

If you take these factors into account, you should be able to read and understand the historical implications of your primary source.

Secondary sources

What are secondary sources?

Secondary sources are accounts written by people who were not themselves involved in the events or in the original expression of the ideas under study. Written after the events/ideas they describe, they are based upon primary sources and/or other secondary works. Thus, an early 20th-century historian could prepare a secondary study of the American Civil war through her reading of documents from that period, interviews with veterans, examination of weapons, and so on.

The information above was based on the part of the University of Colorado’s History Department Guideline to Writing Papers

How to read secondary sources?

Reading secondary historical sources is a skill which may be acquired and must be practiced. Reading academic material well is an active process that can be far removed from the kind of pleasure reading most of us are used to. Sure, history may sometimes be dry, but you'll find success reading even the most difficult material if you can master these skills. The key here is taking the time and energy to engage the material – to think through it and to connect it to other material you have covered.

How to read a book

  • Read the title. Define every word in the title; look up any unknown words. Think about what the title promises for the book.
  • Look at the table of contents. This is your "menu" for the book. What can you tell about its contents and structure from the TOC?
  • Read the book from the outside in. Read the foreword and introduction (if an article, read the first paragraph or two). Read the conclusion or epilogue if there is one (if an article, read the last one or two paragraphs). After all this, ask yourself what the author's thesis might be. How has the argument been structured? This will be a key to your understanding of the rest of the argument.
  • Read chapters from the outside in. Quickly read the first and last paragraph of each chapter. After doing this and taking the step outlined above, you should have a good idea of the book's major themes and arguments.

You are now finally ready to read in earnest.

Don't read a history book as if you were reading a novel for light pleasure reading. Read through the chapters actively, taking cues as to which paragraphs are most important from their topic sentences. (Good topic sentences tell you what the paragraph is about.) Not every sentence and paragraph is as important as every other. It is up to you to judge, based on what you know so far about the book's themes and arguments. If you can, underline (don't highlight), passages that seem to be especially relevant. Feel free to make notes in the margins.

Take notes. Record your thoughts about the reading rather than simply the details and contents of the text. What surprised you? What seemed particularly insightful? What seems suspect? What reinforces or counters points made in other readings? This kind of note taking will keep your reading active, and actually will help you remember the contents of the text.

"S.T.A.M.P." it!

A technique for reading a book which complements the steps above is to answer a series of questions about your reading.

  • How has the author structured her work?
  • How would you briefly outline it?
  • Why might she have employed this structure?
  • What historical argument does the structure employ?
  • After identifying the thesis, ask yourself in what ways the structure of the work enhances or detracts from the thesis.
  • How does the author set about to make her or his case?
  • What about the structure of the work makes it convincing?

A thesis is the controlling argument of a work of history.

Often, the most difficult task when reading a secondary source is to identify the author's thesis. In a well-written essay, the thesis is usually clearly stated near the beginning of the piece. In a long article or book, the thesis is usually diffuse. There may in fact be more than one. As you read, constantly ask yourself, "how could I sum up what this author is saying in one or two sentences?" This is a difficult task; even if you never feel you have succeeded, simply constantly trying to answer this question will advance your understanding of the work.

A thesis is not just a statement of opinion, or a belief, or a thought. It is an argument. Because it is an argument, it is subject to evaluation and analysis.

  • Is it a good argument?
  • How is the big argument (the thesis) structured into little arguments?
  • Are these little arguments constructed well?
  • Is the reasoning valid?
  • Does the evidence support the conclusions?
  • Has the author used invalid or incorrect logic?
  • Is she relying on incorrect premises?
  • What broad, unexamined assumptions seem to underlay the author's argument?
  • Are these correct?

Note here that none of these questions ask if you like the argument or its conclusion. This part of the evaluation process asks you not for your opinion, but to evaluate the logic of the argument. There are two kinds of logic you must consider:

  • Internal Logic is the way authors make their cases, given the initial assumptions, concerns, and definitions set forth in the essay or book. In other words, assuming that their concern is a sound one, does the argument make sense?
  • Holistic Logic regards the piece as a whole. Are the initial assumptions correct? Is the author asking the proper questions? Has the author framed the problem correctly?

Why might the author have written this work?

This is a difficult question, and often requires outside information, such as information on how other historians were writing about the topic. Don't let the absence of that information keep you from using your historical imagination. Even if you don't have the information you wish you had, you can still ask yourself, "Why would the author argue this?" Many times, arguments in older works of history seem ludicrous or silly to us today. When we learn more about the context in which those arguments were made, however, they start to make more sense. Things like political events and movements, an author's ideological bents or biases, or an author's relationship to existing political and cultural institutions often have an impact on the way history is written. On the other hand, the struggle to achieve complete objectivity also affects the ways people have written history. It is only appropriate, then, that such considerations should inform your reading.

Read the footnotes, especially when you come across a particularly interesting or controversial passage. Make sure you can answer the following questions:

  • What primary sources has the historian used to support her argument?
  • Has she used them well?
  • What pitfalls may befall the historians who uses these sources?
  • How does her use of these kinds of sources influence the kinds of arguments she can make?
  • What other sources might she have employed?

This page was adapted from the website by Patrick Rael, "Reading, Writing, and Researching for History: A Guide for College Students,"(Brunswick, ME: Bowdoin College, 2004).