LESSON 2

DISTINCTION BETWEEN
PRIMARY AND SECONDARY
SOURCES
HISTORICAL SOURCE
HISTORICAL SOURCE
❑ An object from the past or testimony
concerning the past on which historians
depend in order to create their own
depiction of that past.
 PRIMARY AND
SECONDARY SOURCES?
❖ What are they?
❖ Advantages and Disadvantages of using primary
and secondary sources?
❖ Categories
PRIMARY SOURCE
❑ Enable the researcher to get as close as
possible to what actually happen during a
historical event or time period.
❑ Are original records of a certain event by
people who have actually experienced or
witnessed it.
PRIMARY SOURCE
1. Diaries and Journals
Ann Frank was a teenager during
World War II. She kept a diary or
journal the years before she died
in a concentration camp.
This is a Primary Source.
PRIMARY SOURCE
1. Diaries and Journals
Sarah Morgan was a young
woman during the Civil War. She
wrote in her diary orjournal what
happened to her and her family
during the war.
This is a Primary Source.
PRIMARY SOURCE
2. Autobiographies
❖ An autobiography is when you write a
story or book about yourself.
❖ Nelson Mandela wrote his
autobiography about events in his life
called, “Long Walk to Freedom: The
Autobiography of Nelson Mandela”.
This is a Primary document because he wrote
his first hand experiences.
 “Education is the most
powerful weapon which you
can use to change the world.”
-Nelson Mandela
PRIMARY SOURCE
3. Sound Recordings and Interviews
❖ During the Great Depression
and World War II, television had
not been invented yet. The
people would often sit around
the radio to listen to Pres.
Roosevelt's war messages.
PRIMARY SOURCE
3. Sound Recordings and Interviews
❖ During the 2008 Election,
Barrack Obama, had many
interviews that were televised.
Those interviews are considered Primary
Sources.
PRIMARY SOURCE
4. Letters
❖ These may include original Letter of Dr. Jose Rizal to his mother.
works such as letters,
legislations, newspaper
articles, diaries, interviews,
government documents,
reports, photographs,
literature, and other
recreative output.
Filipinos during American Occupation
SECONDARY SOURCE
❑ are records based on primary sources.
They explain a certain event of the past
through evaluation and interpretation of
the records created during a historical
period.
SECONDARY SOURCE
❑ are written “after the fact” – that is a later date
❑ Usually, the author of the secondary source will
have studied the primary sources of an
historical period or event and will then interpret
the “evidence” found in these sources.
❑ You can think of secondary sources as second
– hand information
SECONDARY SOURCE
❑ These may include
researches, textbooks,
journals, commentaries,
biographies, and
criticism or review of
literary and creative
works.
SECONDARY SOURCE
❑ Think about like this…
If I tell you something, I am the Primary source.
If you tell someone else what I told you, you are the
secondary source.

❑ Secondary sources materials can be articles in newspapers,

magazines, books, or articles found that evaluate or criticize
someone else’s original research.
PHILIPPINE CONSTITUTION
❑ The primary sources includes the Record of the 1986 Constitutional
Commission, proclamations, speeches of the 48 representative who
collectively drafted the current Constitution, and the text of the
Constitution itself.
❑ Its secondary sources, on the other
hand, may include textbooks,
annotations, and published opinions
about the Constitution.
ADVANTAGES OF PRIMARY SOURCE
❑ Primary Sources provide a window into the past – unfiltered
access to the record of artistic, social, scientific and political
thought and achievement during the specific period under
study, produced by people who lived during that period.

❑ These unique, often profoundly personal, documents, and

objects can give a very real sense of what it was like to be
alive during a lost past era.
DISADVANTAGES OF PRIMARY SOURCE
❑ Primary sources are often incomplete and have little
context. Students must use prior knowledge and work with
multiple primary sources to find patters

❑ In analyzing primary sources, students move from concrete

observations and facts to questioning and making
inferences about materials.
ADVANTAGES OF SECONDARY SOURCE
❑ Secondary Sources can provide analysis, synthesis,
interpretation, or evaluation of the original information.
❑ Secondary sources are best for uncovering background
or historical information about a topic by exposing you to
other’s perspectives, interpretations, and conclusions.
❑ Allows the reader to get expert views of events and often
bring together multiple primary sources relevant to the
subject matter.
DISADVANTAGES OF SECONDARY SOURCE
❑ Their reliability and validity are open to question, and
often they do not provide exact information.
❑ They do not represent firsthand knowledge of a subject or
event.
❑ There are countless books, journal, magazine articles and
web pages that attempt to interpret the past and finding
good secondary sources can be an issue.
 EX TE R NA L AN D
TE R NA L CR IT IC ISM
N
I
HISTORICAL METHOD
❑ Refers to the process of probing primary
sources that will be used in writing history.
❑ This include source criticism which studies
the internal and external validity of
sources.
HISTORICAL SOURCES
❑ Include documents, artifacts,
archeological sites, features, oral
transmissions, stone inscriptions, paintings,
recorded sounds, and oral history
❑ Evan ancient relics and ruins, broadly
speaking, are historical sources.
 How to
luate Historical Source
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