1. Primary Source
A piece of information about a historical event or period in which the creator of the source was an actual participant.

2. Every day, people create and use items that leave clues about their lives.
Personal papers
Letters
Notes
Oral accounts (interviews, or recordings)
Diaries
Maps
Recipes
Photographs
Government documents
Reports
Novels
Poetry
Stories
Artifacts
Coins
Stamps
Drawings
Handiwork
Newspapers

3. Historians call this evidence the “historical record”

4. Items recovered from the
Titanic

5. A Primary Source is a direct personal experience of a time or event.
Clothing
Letters
Photographs
Manuscripts

6. Oral Accounts
Interviews with people who were alive during an event is a primary resource.

7. Documents There are two types of documents that are primary resources.
Published Documents – these are documents that were meant to be made public.
Unpublished Documents- these are documents that were never meant to be shown to others

8. Published Document

9. Unpublished Document

10. Maps are primary sources that give us the information about how people years and years ago imagined the world to be.

11. Maps

12. Drawings and Cartoons
Political cartoons are satires about government decisions, public figures or current events.

13. Drawings and Cartoons

15. Pictures are visual documents that record history.
Pictures capture a brief moment in time and can be “worth a thousand words”.

16. Pictures

18. Paintings

19. Secondary Sources
Secondary sources are sources that were created immediately after or long after an event took place. They are often created by historians, but based on the historian’s reading of primary sources.

20. Secondary Sources

21. Why Use Primary Sources?
To develop critical thinking skills. You have to examine sources and make inferences to understand them.

22. Why use primary sources?
To acquire empathy for the human condition

23. Why use primary sources?
To consider different points of view in analysis

24. Why use primary sources?
To understand the continuum of history