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The Question & Answer (Q&A) Knowledge Managenet
The Internet has many places to ask questions about anything imaginable and find past answers on almost everything.
Secondary sources are important to historians because they are a significant part of how historians practice the craft of history. These sources are the second source of information in that they are written by historians who have previously studied an event that another scholar may want to take up for analysis.
It is important to locate, read and refer to secondary sources in your writing. Secondary sources: provide vital background information. Having as much knowledge as possible about the text or event about which you are researching is crucial.
Secondary sources provide good overviews of a subject, so are particularly useful if you need to find about an area that’s new to you. They are also helpful because you can find keywords to describe a subject area, as well as key authors and key references that you can use to do further reading and research.
They combine information from primary and secondary sources to get a clear picture of a historical period. They prefer to use secondary sources to locate unbiased accounts of historical events. They are able to use primary sources only to understand the accurate timeline of events in a historical period.
Primary sources provide a window into the past — unfiltered access to the record of social, scientific and political thought and achievement during a past time period, produced by people who lived during that time.
A primary source gives you direct access to the subject of your research. Secondary sources provide second-hand information and commentary from other researchers. Primary sources are more credible as evidence, but good research uses both primary and secondary sources.
Historians rely upon these sources to get the perspectives of people who participated in historical events. Primary sources help historians and students relate to events of the past. These sources help students develop the skills, knowledge, and critical thinking needed to interpret them.
The use of primary sources exposes students to important historical concepts. First, students become aware that all written history reflects an author’s interpretation of past events. Therefore, as students read a historical account, they can recognize its subjective nature.
In this section you will learn about the following types of information sources:
Three of the most common sources of inspiration are informal observations, practical problems, and previous research. Informal observations include direct observations of our own and others’ behaviour as well as secondhand observations from nonscientific sources such as newspapers, books, blogs, and so on.
Your research resources can come from your experiences; print media, such as books, brochures, journals, magazines, newspapers, and books; and CD-ROMs and other electronic sources, such as the Internet and the World Wide Web. They may also come from interviews and surveys you or someone else designs.
There are two main types of historical sources: primary sources and secondary sources.