Visualizing Modernity

What are primary sources?

Primary sources are documents (or other kinds of materials) that were created in the past that can be used by researchers in the present to gain insight into a specific time period. Primary sources provide ideas and evidence about events in the past. Scholars use the evidence found in primary sources to draw conclusions and construct narratives about the past.

In art history, primary sources might include:

• letters or records of sales between artists, patrons, dealers, friends, etc.
• exhibition reviews or eyewitness accounts of events (reviews of the 1913 Armory Show, photos of World's Fairs)
• ephemera (items not meant to be kept long-term): ticket stubs, exhibit pamphlets, t-shirts, playbills, tote bags, etc.

Primary sources can also include the original object of study, such as original paintings or photographs, historic fashion or furniture, and other objects and remnants of material culture.

What are secondary sources?

Secondary sources are published works that present arguments and conclusions about events in the past based on primary source (or archival) research. Types of secondary sources include: research/scholarly articles, textbooks, magazine articles, histories, criticisms, commentaries, and encyclopedias.

See the tab "Explore Primary Source Collections" for a selection of digitized sources available through Mason or other public/open sources.

• Digital collections: Digital collections are often organized by topic, or allow you to search by keyword or subject headings (i.e. special terms that are used to label what a source is about, like "Labor laws" or "Civil Rights Movement"). Digitized archival collections may also be organized using a finding aid.
• Library catalogs: Some primary sources are reproduced/republished into books. To find these in a library, try searching for your keywords and one of these subject headings for primary sources:
  --correspondence; --description and travel; --interviews; --maps; --narratives; --collections; sources; --pictorial works; --diaries; --biography, --quotations; --discovery and exploration

The following is a list of questions to help guide your primary source research:

• Who created this document? Who took this photo? Who wrote and received this letter?   
• What do you know about this organization?
• What do you know about the historical context of the source?
• How does the source creator fit into this historical context? What was his or her role?
• Why was this source created?
• What kinds of factual information does it provide?
• What is conveyed, but not necessarily intentionally?
• What is not conveyed in this source? What isn't being said?
• What is surprising, unique, puzzling, and interesting in this source?
• How does the creator of this source convey information?
• How is the world today different than when this document was created?
• How might this source have been received in its time?
• How does this source compare to accounts in secondary sources?
• What do you believe and what doesn't seem credible about this source?
• What do you still not know and where might you find it?

• Research Using Primary Sources - An introduction to using primary sources in research - defines a primary source, secondary source, archives, archivist, finding aid, and special collections.
• Using Archives: A Guide to Effective Research - This website sponsored by the Society of American Archivists addresses the functions and procedures of archives and is designed both for first-time archives users and scholars who have already conducted research in archives.
• Using Primary Sources - A short essay from the DoHistory site that explains how one might begin research in an Archive.
• Using Primary Sources on the Web - A comprehensive guide to primary sources on the Web created by the American Library Association.