Information Literacy

1. Information Literacy :
Primary Vs Secondary

2. Secondary Sources
Start your research with secondary sources to learn the story.
Primary Sources
Use primary sources as the basis for interpretation.
Always make appointments to use primary source materials.

3. Secondary Sources
•Are accounts of the past created by people writing about events after they
have happened
•Are what historians (and History Day participants) create
•Books/Textbooks
•Encyclopedias
•Articles
•Websites

4. Secondary Sources
Provide an introduction to a topic
Provide historical/broader context for a topic
Show how has a topic been interpreted by other historians
Provide hints on where to find primary evidence
Provide information which enables historians to make
sense of primary sources

5. Primary Sources:
Are left behind by participants or observers
Make personal connections to the past
Are evidence used by historians to
support their interpretation of the past

6. Primary Sources:
Published materials: Books (including memoirs),
magazines, and newspapers contemporary to the event

7. Primary Sources:
Unpublished materials: Diaries, letters, manuscripts

8. Primary Sources:
Records: Government documents, census data,
birth certificates, organizational minutes, business
reports

9. Primary Sources:
Images: Photographs, film, art and posters,
advertisements, maps

10. Primary Sources:
Audio:
• Oral Histories
• Interviews
• Recordings

11. Primary Sources:
Artifacts: Buildings, Tombstones, Clothing

12. Secondary Sources - Textbooks
http://www.nysl.nysed.gov/teacherguides/strike/activity1.htm
• Classroom textbooks may
be the first place you look
for information about
historical events, but they
may not contain enough
information, or present
historical events in an
unbiased way. That is
because they are
secondary sources; in
other words, the authors
themselves were not
witnesses to all the events
included in the books

13. Secondary Sources - Textbooks
• Because textbooks must
contain a great deal of
historical information,
events that were important
when they occurred may be
described in a paragraph or
two in the texts, due to space
considerations.
• These questions are known
in newspaper writing as
the "5 Ws": who, what,
when, where, why - and
then, what was the result.

14. Primary vs. Secondary Sources
• To truly research a topic or event in history, you may begin with
secondary sources to get some information, but you will need to also use
primary sources, information about the topic or event from the actual
time period in which the event occurred. Primary sources fall into six
categories:
1. Published materials: Books (including memoirs), magazines, and newspapers
contemporary to the event
2. Records: Government documents, census data, birth certificates,
organizational minutes, business reports, marriage licenses, laws, trial
transcripts, deeds
3. Unpublished materials: Diaries, letters, manuscripts
4. Images: Photographs, film, art and posters, advertisements, maps
5. Audio: eye or ear witness accounts, such as an oral history or interview with
someone who was actually present at the time of the event, or someone's
diary; interviews, recordings
6. Artifacts: physical remains, such as photographs, newspaper articles from
the period, buildings, clothing,, Tombstones, etc.

15. Comparing Primary and Secondary Sources
• In this activity, you will
compare how the Railroad
Strike of 1877 (sometimes
called "The Great Strike of
1877") is reported in the
textbooks with several
actual reports of the strike
printed in an important
newspaper from that time
period, The Albany Argus.