The Difference between a Primary Source and a Secondary Source
A primary source is a document or physical object which was written or created during the time under study. These sources were present during an experience or time period and offer an inside view of a particular event. Some types of primary sources include: original documents (excerpts or translations acceptable): diaries, speeches. creative works: poetry, drama, novels, music, art relics or artefacts: pottery, furniture, clothing, buildings
Examples of primary sources include:
Diary of Anne Frank - Experiences of a Jewish family during WWII
The Constitution of Canada - Canadian History
A secondary source interprets and analyzes primary sources. These sources are one or more steps removed from the event. Secondary sources may have pictures, quotes or graphics of primary sources in them. Some types of secondary sources include: publications: Textbooks, magazine articles, histories, criticisms, commentaries, encyclopaedias
The difference between a primary and secondary source is often determined by how they were originally created and how you use them. Here's an example: a painting or a photograph is often considered a primary source, because paintings and photographs can illustrate past events as they happened and people as they were at a particular time. However, not all artworks and photographs are considered primary sources.
Periodization is the attempt to categorize universal history or divide time into named blocks. To the extent that history is continuous and ungeneralizable, all systems of periodization are more or less arbitrary. Yet without named periods, however clumsy or imprecise, past time would be nothing more than scattered events without a framework to help us understand them. Nations, cultures, families, and even individuals, each with their different remembered histories, are constantly engaged in imposing overlapping, often unsystematized, schemes of temporal periodization; periodizing labels are continually challenged and redefined, but once
Examples of primary sources include:
Diary of Anne Frank - Experiences of a Jewish family during WWII
The Constitution of Canada - Canadian History
A secondary source interprets and analyzes primary sources. These sources are one or more steps removed from the event. Secondary sources may have pictures, quotes or graphics of primary sources in them. Some types of secondary sources include: publications: Textbooks, magazine articles, histories, criticisms, commentaries, encyclopaedias
The difference between a primary and secondary source is often determined by how they were originally created and how you use them. Here's an example: a painting or a photograph is often considered a primary source, because paintings and photographs can illustrate past events as they happened and people as they were at a particular time. However, not all artworks and photographs are considered primary sources.
Periodization is the attempt to categorize universal history or divide time into named blocks. To the extent that history is continuous and ungeneralizable, all systems of periodization are more or less arbitrary. Yet without named periods, however clumsy or imprecise, past time would be nothing more than scattered events without a framework to help us understand them. Nations, cultures, families, and even individuals, each with their different remembered histories, are constantly engaged in imposing overlapping, often unsystematized, schemes of temporal periodization; periodizing labels are continually challenged and redefined, but once