#611 Skills Workshop: Selecting Good Secondary Sources

Primary, secondary, and tertiary sources

What are primary, secondary, and tertiary sources?

• A primary source was produced at the same time that the events described in the source took place.
  • How have we practiced working with primary sources during our course?
• A secondary source is written later, often based on research incorporating those primary sources.
  • What do you think would make a good secondary source?
• Tertiary sources are reference materials like encyclopedia that summarize information contained in secondary sources.
  • What role might tertiary sources play in your research paper?

In most cases, these are easy to differentiate. But keep in mind some possible challenges:

• Diaries and letters written by people who were participants in the actions they describe are easy to classify as primary sources, but what about memoirs or autobiographies? These are usually written well after the events took place and often will tell you more about the period in which they were written than about the period they describe.
• What about newspapers? The author of an article presents an interpretation, but if the article reports current events, it is primary. If the article reports past events, it is secondary. Keep in mind that an article about a past event can present valuable primary evidence concerning the author’s context.

Apply: complete the following chart (Google Doc)

Keys to selecting good secondary sources

Together we will overview the handout “Selecting Good Secondary Sources” (Google Doc) that you previewed for homework.

Next, work as a team to identify six excellent secondary sources that might be useful for historical research on the team-specific topic that has been assigned to your group.

Check your sources against the author, publisher, and date tips on the handout. Identify sources you think are:

• especially strong, and
• might need to be analyzed more closely.

Debrief together as a class.

Possible topics (note these are the same topics we will select from for our group presentations):

• The Women’s suffrage movement
• Prohibition
• The Socialist Party in the United States
• Treaty of Versailles
• President Herbert Hoover
• Dorothea Lange’s photography (documenting the Great Depression)
• Connections between the Great Depression and the Great Recession of 2008
• The New Deal
• President Franklin D. Roosevelt
• The Red Scare of 1919-1920
• U.S. reactions to the growth of fascism​