Historical source

Historical sources encompass "every kind of evidence that human beings have left of their past activities — the written word and spoken word, the shape of the landscape and the material artefact, the fine arts as well as photography and film."^[1]

While the range of potential historical sources has expanded to include many non-documentary sources, nevertheless "the study of history has nearly always been based squarely on what the historian can read in documents or hear from informants".^[2]

Historical sources are usually divided into primary and secondary, though some historians also refer to tertiary sources.

Types

Primary source

In the study of history as an academic discipline, a "primary source" (also called an "original source") is a first hand account of events by someone who lived through them. "Primary sources were made during the historical period that is being investigated."^[3]

Secondary source

In scholarship, a secondary source^[4]^[5] is a document or recording that relates or discusses information originally presented elsewhere.

A secondary source is one that gives information about a primary source. In a secondary source, the original information is selected, modified and arranged in a suitable format. Secondary sources involve generalization, analysis, interpretation, or evaluation of the original information.

Tertiary source

A tertiary source is an index or textual consolidation of already published primary and secondary sources^[6] that does not provide additional interpretations or analysis of the sources.^[7]^[8] Some tertiary sources can be used as an aid to find key (seminal) sources, key terms, general common knowledge^[9] and established mainstream science on a topic. The exact definition of tertiary varies by academic field.