primary documents
Unfiltered accounts from participants
Primary documents are original materials created at the time of the events they record—letters, diaries, photographs, legal records, newspaper articles, interviews.
Historians and researchers distinguish these from secondary sources, which analyze or interpret primary materials.
In legal contexts, primary documents are the original records rather than copies: The court required primary documents, not photocopies.
Also called primary sources.
- diariesPersonal daily records
- journalsPeriodicals or personal logs
- personal correspondenceDirect written communication between individuals
- contractsEnforceable written agreements
- lab notebooksBound records of experiments
datasets · deeds · land grants · letters · speeches · patents · blueprints · autobiographies · affidavits · oral histories · eyewitness accounts · wills · death records · marriage licenses · census records · tax records · sketches · field notes
- historical recordsdiary, census record, annual reviews, letter, government records
- authorshipauthorship, author bio, byline, attributed, credited
- WWII artifactsdog tags, helmets, service medals, war bonds, ration books
primary documentssecondary sources
Materials analyzing original records
textbooks · encyclopedias · syntheses · derivative works · commentary
primary documentsreference works
Publications for looking things up
historiography · meta-analysis · literature reviews · handbooks · compilations
primary, document, prime, primal, primarily, primer, primitive, primacy, primeval