How to Work With Primary Sources

Primary sources are documents, pictures, films created by people who were on-the-spot. They participated in or witnessed events in the past. It is the closest we can get to the real thing.

Understanding What You Read
Researchers often have problems understanding primary sources. The people who recorded the information did not write for the public, and certainly not for us.

Examples:
A young Civil War soldier wrote in his diary in the same way he spoke. The researcher may have to read the pages out loud to understand the words.

In other cases, a specialized group wrote a report geared to other specialists. It is for internal use within a closed community. Both the subject and the jargon may be difficult for the layman to understand.

Look up strange words. Simplify definitions and rewrite them in your own words.

Taking Notes
Although highlighters are practical, too much highlighting makes reading difficult.
A page where the reader highlights 5 keywords and a couple of sentences is useful.
A page where the reader highlights 3 out of 4 paragraphs is useless.
Avoid copying passages straight from the book. Use your own words.

Follow-Ups
Following up is important because it puts the information into the right perspectives.

It indicates:
1) leads to follow
2) items to check

Evaluation Forms
Not only should you evaluate every source, but each one has to be evaluated according to a common criteria. If you do this, you are centain of having a uniformed validity.

1) Who wrote it?
2) Why?
3) For whom?
4) When

Take your time and squeeze every bit of information out of the document.