Primary vs Secondary - HIST 143H - Perry - Fall 2020 - Research Guides at Rio Hondo College

What is a Primary Source?

Primary sources are original materials that provide direct evidence concerning a topic or event -- firsthand records created by people who actually participated in an event, or remembered an event and reported on the event and their reactions to it.
Primary sources can be created at the time when the event occurred (e.g., speeches, letters and newspaper articles) or years later (such as, autobiographies, memoirs and oral history interviews).

Favorite Primary Source Web Sites

Calisphere
Calisphere provides free access to unique and historically important artifacts for research, teaching, and curious exploration. Discover over 750,000 photographs, documents, letters, artwork, diaries, oral histories, films, advertisements, musical recordings, and more.
Library of Congress, Digital Collections
The Library of Congress is the largest library in the world, with millions of books, recordings, photographs, newspapers, maps and manuscripts in its collections. The Library is the main research arm of the U.S. Congress and the home of the U.S. Copyright Office.
Hathi Trust Digital Library
HathiTrust is a partnership of major research institutions and libraries working to ensure that the cultural record is preserved and accessible long into the future. The mission of HathiTrust is to contribute to research, scholarship, and the common good by collaboratively collecting, organizing, preserving, communicating, and sharing the record of human knowledge.
National Archives
The National Archives is the U.S. Government’s collection of documents that records important events in American history. The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is the Government agency that preserves and maintains these materials and makes them available for research.

College Archives

Did You Know?

The library collects and maintains the Rio Hondo College Archives. The Archives is where you will find original material published or created by the College.

RHC Archives Photograph Collection
RHC Scrapbooks
El Paisano
Annual Reports

.....and much more!

What is an Archives?

An archives is a place where people can go to gather firsthand facts, data, and evidence from letters, reports, notes, memos, photographs, and other primary sources.

(Source: https://www.archives.gov/about/info/whats-an-archives.html)

What is a Secondary Source?

Secondary sources were created by someone who did not experience firsthand or participate in the event.
A secondary source may interpret, analyze or summarize information from primary sources (such as textbooks, journal articles, encyclopedia entries)

HIST 143H - Perry - Fall 2020: Primary vs Secondary

What is a Primary Source?

Favorite Primary Source Web Sites

College Archives

What is a Secondary Source?