1. US National Archives Buildings Washington, DC & College Park, MD

2. Rotunda of the National Archives

3. Laid side to side, pages in the holdings of the National Archives would circle the Earth over 57 times!

4. How Do We Know? The roles that Primary Sources can play

5. Primary Sources: What Are They? Materials produced at the time of an event by participants.

6. Primary Sources--Examples  Letters  Maps  Telegrams  Photographs  Motion Picture Films  Speeches  Eyewitness Accounts  Memos  Artifacts  Sound Recordings  Press Releases  Drawings... And much more!

7. Primary Sources--So What?  They Help Us to Know.  They provide us with proof  They Encourage Us to Think.  About conflicting information  About bias and perspective  About their intended audience  They Prompt Us to Wonder.  They make us question what we thought we knew and make us want to know more  They Make Us Feel More Connected.

8. Question #1  Is the Statue of Liberty’s foot as big as a man? How do you know?

10. Question #2  Who Invented the cotton gin? The light bulb? The telephone? How do you know?

12. Question #3  Did the United States purchase Alaska from Russia for $7.2 million? How do we know?

14. Question #4  Can airplanes travel faster than the speed of sound? How do you know?

16. To what extent do these documents...  Provide us with proof?  Encourage us to think about:  Conflicting information?  Bias and perspective?  Intended audiences?  Make us question what we thought we knew?  Make us want to know more?  Make us feel more connected?

20. For more... National Archives Web Site: www.archives.gov “Democracy Starts Here” film http://videocast.nih.gov/sla/NARA/dsh/index.h tml