Primary source

A primary source is an original document or other material that has not been changed in any way.^[1] It is a reliable first-hand account usually written at or near the time the event(s) occurred.^[2] Usually it was produced by someone with direct personal knowledge of the events that are described. It is used as an original source of information about the topic.^[3] Primary sources are distinguished from secondary sources. Secondary sources are documents based on primary sources.^[4] Thus, a memoir of a participant in an event is a primary source, whilst a history of that event based on several memoirs is a secondary source. Different kinds of work have slightly different definitions of a primary source.^[5] In journalism, for example, a primary source can also be a person.

• Historiography
• Secondary source
• Tertiary source

• Jules R. Benjamin. A Student's Guide to History (2003)
• Kathleen W. Craver. Using Internet Primary Sources to Teach Critical Thinking Skills in History (1999)
• Thomas Cripps, "Historical Truth: An Interview with Ken Burns", American Historical Review 100 (1995), 741–64. online at JSTOR
• Michael Drake and Ruth Finnegan (Eds), Sources and Methods for Family and Community Historians: A Handbook, (Cambridge University Press in conjunction with the Open University, 1997)
• Wood Gray, Historian's handbook, a key to the study and writing of history (Houghton Mifflin, 1964).
• Martha C. Howell and Walter Prevenier. From Reliable Sources: An Introduction to Historical Methods (2001)
• Library of Congress, " Analysis of Primary Sources" online 2007
• Richard A. Marius and Melvin E. Page. A Short Guide to Writing About History (5th Edition) (2004)
• Barbara W. Sommer and Mary Kay Quinlan, The Oral History Manual (2002)

- to primary sources repositories

• A listing of over 5000 websites Archived 2008-09-13 at the Wayback Machine describing holdings of manuscripts, archives, rare books, historical photographs, and other primary sources
• Find primary sources Archived 2020-02-27 at the Wayback Machine in the collections of major research libraries using ArchiveGrid

- to all sources repositories

• Wikisource – The Free Library – is the Wikimedia project that collects, edits, and catalogs all source texts.

- to essays and descriptions of primary, secondary and other sources

• Ithaca College Library Archived 2007-10-28 at the Wayback Machine - Primary and secondary sources
• "How to distinguish between primary and secondary sources" from the University of California, Santa Cruz Library
• "Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary sources" Archived 2014-11-06 at the Wayback Machine from James Cook University Library
• Joan of Arc: Primary Sources Series—Example of a publication focusing on primary source documents.
• Finding primary sources from the University of California, Berkeley library
• "Primary versus secondary sources" Archived 2007-11-18 at the Wayback Machine from the Bowling Green State University library
• Finding primary sources in world history

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