Sources of History

(Primary & Secondary)

“To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain

always a child”- Marcus Tullius Cicero
Leaning Objectives
At the end of this chapter, the student is expected to:
1. Evaluate primary sources for their credibility, authenticity, and
provenance.

Chapter Outline:
2. Distinction of Primary, Secondary and Tertiary Sources
3. External and Internal Criticism
4. General Principles of Determining Reliability
Categories of Historical Sources
• Documents- are written or printed materials that have been
produced in one form or another sometime in the past
• Numerical Records- include any type of numerical data in printed
or handwritten form.
• Oral Statements- include any form of statement made orally by
someone.
• Relics- are any objects whose physical or visual characteristics
can provide some information about the past
Primary Sources
 Advantages and
Disadvantages
• Directly address your topic and often
provide information that is unavailable
elsewhere.
• Example: the questions you compose for
an interview or a survey, a test to a
particular hypothesis
• As eye witness to the accounts may be
too close to the subjects, lacking a
critical distance

Primary sources give firsthand, original, and unfiltered

information. Examples: eye witness accounts,
personal journals, interviews, surveys, experiments,
historical documents, and artifacts. These sources
have a close, direct connection to their subjects
Secondary Sources
 Advantages and
Disadvantages
• Provides variety of expert perspectives and
insights.
• Peer reviews usually ensures the quality of
sources such as scholarly articles
• Researching is more efficient than
planning, conducting, and analyzing certain
primary sources
• Not necessarily focused on your specific
topic, you m ay have to dig to find
applicable information.
• Information may be colored by the writer’s
own bias or faulty approach Secondary Sources are one step removed
from the topic. They are valuable as primary
sources, they are filtered through someone
else’s perspective and may be biased
Tertiary Sources
 Advantages and
Disadvantages
• Offer a quick, easy introduction to your
topic. They may point to high-quality
primary and secondary sources.
• Because of their distance, tertiary
sources may oversimplify or otherwise
distort a topic. By rehashing secondary
sources, they may miss new insights into
a topic

Tertiary sources provide third-hand information by

reporting ideas and details from the secondary. This
does not mean that tertiary source have no value,
merely that they include the potential for an additional
layer of bias.
 Primary Sources
❑ Created at the time of an event, or
Tertiary Sources
very soon after
❑ Created by someone who saw or
heard an event themselves
❑ Often one-of-a-kind, or rare
❑ Letters, diaries, photos, and
newspapers (can all be primary
sources)
Secondary Sources
❑ Created after event; something a
long time after something happened
❑ Often uses primary sources as
examples
❑ Expresses an opinion or an
argument about a past event
❑ Historical text books, historical
movies and biographies (can all be
secondary sources)
Types of Primary
Sources
1. Autobiographies and memoirs

❖ Is an account of a person’s life written by that person.

❖ Take in a form like intimate writings made during life that were not
necessarily intended for publication (including letters, diaries, journals,
memoirs, and reminiscences) to a formal book-length autobiography.
❖ “Mga Tala ng Aking Buhay” by Gregorian de Jesus about herself, her
husband Andres Bonifacio, the Katipunan and the Philippine
Revolution
1. Autobiographies and memoirs
❖ Is a history or record composed from personal observation and
experience. Closely related to, and often confused with,
autobiography, a memoir usually differs chiefly in the degree of
emphasis placed on external events; whereas writers of
autobiography are concerned primarily with themselves as a subject
matter, writers of memoir are usually persons who have played roles
in, or have been close observers of, historical events and main
purpose is to describe or interpret the events.
❖ Example: “La Revolucion Filipina,” a compact analysis and
commentary on the Philippine Revolution by Apolinario Mabini
2. Diaries, Personal Letters, and
Correspondence

❖ A diary, a form of autobiographical writing, is a regularly kept record

of the diarist’s activities and reflections. Written primarily for the
writer’s use alone, the diary has a frankness that is unlike writing
done for publication
❖ Example: diary of former President Ferdinand E. Marcos
2. Diaries, Personal Letters, and
Correspondence

❖ A personal letter is a type of letter (informal composition) that usually

concerns personal matters (rather than professional concerns) and is
sent from one individual to another
❖ Example: Marcelo H. del Pilar to his niece, Josefa Gatmaitan. It was
translated from Spanish into English by del Pilar’s granddaughter Atty.
Benita Marasigan vda. De Santos
2. Diaries, Personal Letters, and
Correspondence

❖ A correspondence is a body of letters or communications. If you’ve

ever had a pen pal buddy, you’ve written plenty of correspondence
❖ Some examples of correspondence are those body of letters between
Jose Rizal and Ferdinand Blumentritt
3. Interviews, Survey, and Fieldwork
❖ An interview is a conversation where questions are asked and
answers are given. In common parlance, the word “interview” refers to
a one-on-one conversation with one person acting in the role of the
interviewee. The interviewer asks questions, the interviewee
responds, with participants taking turns talking. Interviews usually
involve a transfer of information from interviewee to interviewer, which
usually the primary purpose of the interview, although information
transfer can happen in both directions simultaneously.
❖ Example: Between Walter Dempster, Jr. and Ronald D. Klein. Walter
Dempster Jr. is the last person alive who can witness to the Japanese
rape atrocities against gays. The interview took place on August 10,
2002.
3. Interviews, Survey, and Fieldwork

❖ A survey is a list of questions aimed at extracting specific data from a

particular group of people. Surveys may be conducted by phone, mail,
via the internet, and sometimes face-to-face on busy streets corners
or in malls. Survey research is often used to assess thoughts,
opinions, and feelings. Survey can be specific and limited, or they can
have some more global, widespread goals.
3. Interviews, Survey, and Fieldwork

❖ A fieldwork or field research is the collection of information outside

a laboratory, library or workplace setting. Field research involves a
range of well-defined, although variable, methods: informal interviews,
direct observation, participation in the life of the group, collective
discussions, analyzes of personal documents produced within the
group, self- analysis, results from activities undertaken off-or on-line,
and life-histories.
4. Photographs and Posters

❖ Photographs and posters are often considered as primary sources,

because photographs and posters can illustrate past events as they
happened and people as they were at a particular time
❖ Examples: are those images captured by various photographer during
1986 EDSA.
5. Works of Art and Literature
❖ In fine art, a work of art, an artwork, or a work is a creation, such as
song, book, print, sculpture, or a painting, that has been made in
order to be a thing of beauty in itself or a symbolic statement of
meaning, rather than having a practical function. Art can take the form
of:
Paintings: a form of visual art where paint or ink is used on a
canvas or, more often in the past, wooden panels or plaster walls, to
depict an artist’s rendering of a scene or even of an abstract, non-
representational image.
5. Works of Art and Literature
Drawings: a form of visual art in which a person uses various
drawing instruments to mark paper or another two-dimensional medium.
Instruments include graphite pencils, pen and ink, inked brushes, wax
colored pencils, crayons, charcoal, chalk, pastels, various kinds of
erasers, markers, styluses, various metals (such as silverpoint) and
electronic drawing.
Literature: a body of written works. The name has traditionally been
applied to those imaginative works of poetry and prose distinguished by
the intentions of their authors, and perceived aesthetic excellence of
their execution. Literature may be classified according to a variety of
systems, including language, national origin, historical period, genre,
and subject matter.
❖ P
6. Speeches and Oral Histories

❖ A speech is a form of communication in spoken language, made by a

speaker before an audience for a given purpose
❖ Example: Rizal’s toast speech delivered at a banquet in the
Restaurant Ingles, Madrid on the evening of June 25, 1884 in honor
of Juan Luna, a winner of the gold medal for his painting, “El
Spoliarium,” and Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo, a winner of siver medal,
for his painting “Virgenes Cristianas Expuestas al Populacho” at a
Exposicion Nacional de Bellas Artes de Madrid
❖ P
7. Others

❖ Other types of primary sources include books, magazine, and

newspaper articles and ads published at the time of the event and
artifacts of all kinds, such as tools, coins, clothing, furniture, etc.
❖ P
Types of Secondary
Sources
❖ Secondary sources were created by someone who did not
experience first-hand or participate in the events or conditions you’re
researching. Some types of secondary sources include:
bibliographies, nonfictions text such as biographical works,
periodicals, newspapers, magazines, journals, history books,
works of criticism and interpretation, commentaries, and
treatises, textbooks, video documentaries, and multimedia
reports.
1. Bibliographies

❖ An annotated bibliography is an organized list of sources, each of

which is followed by a brief note or “annotation”. These annotations
do one or more of the following: describe the content and focus of the
book or article, suggest the source’s usefulness to your research,
evaluate its methods, conclusions, or reliability, and record your
reactions to the source
❖ Example: Dr. Jose Rizal’s annotations to Antonio de Morga’s
Succesos de las Islas Filipinas
❖ P
2. Biographical Works
❖ A biography is a description of a real person’s life, including factual
details as well as stories from the person’s life. The word biography
comes from the Greek words bios, meaning “life” and –graphia,
meaning, “writing”. Biographies usually include information about the
subjects’ personality and motivations, and other kinds of intimate
details excluded in a general overview or profile of a person’s life
P

❖ Example: Andres Bonifacio, the “Father of the Philippine Revolution”

and the “President of the Tagalog Republic”

❖ Exa
3. Periodicals
❖ Periodicals are newspapers, magazines, and scholarly journals-all of
which are published “periodically.” Some periodicals are in print,
some are electronic, some use both formats (often with added
information or a multimedia element in the electronic version).
A. Newspaper- is a periodical publication containing, written
information about current events. Newspaper can cover wide variety of
field such as politics, business, sport and art often include materials
such as opinion columns, weather forecasts, reviews of local services,
obituaries, birth notices, crosswords, editorial cartoons, comic strips,
and advice columns.

❖ Exa
3. Periodicals
B. Magazine and Journal
Unlike daily newspaper, magazines and journal may be published
weekly, monthly, quarterly, annually, or at some other interval. Print
editions use better paper and more color than newspapers do. The main
difference between magazines and journal is their audience. Journals
are written by scholars for scholars; magazines are produced by
professional writers and editors for a general readership.

❖ Exa
4. Literature Reviews and Review Articles
(e.g., movie reviews, book reviews)
❖ A literature review is an evaluative report of information found in the
literature related to your selected area of study. The review should
describe, summarize, evaluate, and clarify this literature. It should
give a theoretical base for the research and help you determine the
nature of your research
❖ A review article summarizes the current state of understanding on
topic. A review article surveys and summarizes previously published
studies, rather than reporting new facts or analysis. Review articles
are also called survey articles or, in news publishing, overview
articles. Academic publications that specializes in review articles are
known as review journals.
❖ Exa
4. Literature Reviews and Review Articles
(e.g., movie reviews, book reviews)
❖ A film review is a popular way for critics to assess a film’s overall
quality and determine whether or not they think the film is worth
recommending. Film reviews differ from scholarly film articles in that
they encompass personal and idiosyncratic reactions to and
evaluation of a film, as well as objective analyzes of the film’s formal
techniques and thematic content.

❖ Example: Richard Kuiper on “Heneral Luna: The Philippines’ foreign-

language Oscar hopeful is a rousing historical epic set during the
Philippine-American War
❖ Exa
4. Literature Reviews and Review Articles
(e.g., movie reviews, book reviews)
❖ A book review is a form of literary criticism in which a book is
analyzed based on content, style, and merit. A book review may be
primary source, opinion piece, summary review or scholarly review.
Books can be reviewed for printed periodicals, magazines, and may
vary from a single paragraph to a substantial essay. Such a review
may evaluate the book on the basis of personal taste. Reviewers may
use the occasion of a book or to promulgate their own ideas on the
topic of a fiction or non-fiction
❖ Example: is the review of Alfred P. James of University of Pittsburg on
the book “Understanding History-A Primer of Historical Method (1950)
by Louis Gottschalk, New York, Alfred A. Knopf”
❖ Exa
5. Others

❖ Other types of secondary sources include scholarly books, works of

criticism and interpretation, commentaries, and treatise, textbooks,
video documentaries, and multimedia reports.
Types of Tertiary
Sources
Types of Tertiary Sources

1. General references such as dictionaries, encyclopedias,, almanacs,

and atlases
2. Crowd sources Wikipedia, YouTube, message boards, and social
media sites like Twitter and Facebook
3. Search sites xa
Repositories of Primary
Sources
A Library

❖ A library is a collection of sources of information and similar

resources, made accessible to a defined community for reference or
borrowing. It provides physical or digital access to material, and may
be physical building or room, or a virtual space, or both. A library’s
collection can include books, periodicals, newspapers, manuscripts,
films, maps, prints, documents, microforms, CDs, cassettes,
videotapes, DVDs, Blu-ray Discs, e-books, audiobooks, databases,
and other formats. Libraries range in size from a few shelves of book
to several million items
An Archive

❖ An archive is an accumulation of historical records or the physical

place they are located. Archives contain primary source documents
that have accumulated over the course of an individual or
organization’s lifetime and are kept to show the function of that
person or organization. Professional archivists and historians
generally understand archives to be records that have been naturally
and necessarily generated as a product of regular, legal,
commercial, administrative, or social activities. They have been
metaphorically defined as “the secretions of an organism” and are
distinguished from documents that have been consciously written or
created to communicate a particular message to posterity.
A Museum

❖ A museum is an institution that cares for or conserves a collection of

artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific
importance. Many public museums make these items available for
public viewing through exhibits that may be permanent or temporary.
A Historical Society

❖ A historical society (sometimes also preservation society) is an

organization dedicated to preserving, collecting, researching, and
interpreting historical information or items. Originally, these were
created as a way to help future generations understand their
heritage.
Special Collections

❖ Are libraries or library units that house materials requiring

specialized and user services.
Document Collection
Is used in Historical Research and in other research
designs in combination with other ways of data
collection.