Somewhere in elementary school, we begin to introduce the concept of “primary source” to the children and then work heavily with it during the upper grades into high school.
A primary source is a document, photo, letter, writing, or recording from a person who was a primary “witness” to an event or era.
Primary sources give us a personal understanding of a time or place. Coupled with other primary sources, we can make accurate statements about a particular event or era. Each person has a bias that they may display in any given recording of history. Hopefully, when there are many voices we have a clear picture.
The library of the University of California at Irvine has a webpage dedicated to primary sources. Here’s a list of possible formats:
- archives and manuscript material.
- photographs, audio recordings, video recordings, films.
- journals, letters and diaries.
- speeches.
- scrapbooks.
- published books, newspapers and magazine clippings published at the time.
- government publications.
- oral histories.
This website also includes some details on the characteristics of a primary source that I find enlightening.
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Go on to Module 3, Choices for Point of View and Verb Tense: first person point-of-view