Primary Sources: What are primary sources?

About Primary Sources

Primary sources provide direct evidence about events, or a person’s thoughts or actions, original ideas, or direct observations of a research/study. Original data, creative works, images, or artifacts created at the time an event occurred, or soon after, by a participant in the events being studied, are primary sources.

Primary sources can be books (or articles or reports) written by an author (or organization) using original concepts. Examples are: such as:

• A scholarly article written by the creator of a study and reporting that study. (IMPORTANT NOTE: Not all scholarly articles are primary sources! See more information below, on this page.)

• A book, novel, play, poem, work of art written by an author using his/her original ideas.

• A research report written by a commercial organization such as the Rand Corporation (at https://www.rand.org/pubs/external_publications/EP70551.html) or by a nonprofit organization such as New Jersey Education Association.

• Government documents such as congressional hearings with testimony from ­­various participants, laws, agency reports, congressional committee reports or investigations.

• Historical documents, videos and documentaries created in the time period of the topic being researched

(Also, newspaper accounts of an event that just happened, maps, paintings and other artifacts, photographs, speeches, patents, autobiographies, journals, diaries, narratives and oral histories.)