Primary source and sendary source,?

Question

what are some examples of each?

Answer 1

Franz got the essentials right, primary is something original and secondary is a later interpretation.  But some of the examples offered were a bit hazy.  A good example of a primary source is a diary.  It is what the person actually wrote so you know it to e as accurate as possible.  The person could have made stuff up in the diary but even this would tell you a good deal about the person.  Now if I took a persons diary and wrote a biography of that person the biography would be a secondary source.  In history and anthropology, primary sources are preferred because they are closer to the point of origin.  What I write in the biography is not as accurate as the original diary.  Another good example would be census records (or any government documents).  If I was writing a paper on the migrant agrarian populations in the 1920s I would want to cite original records of movement patterns rather than a book written about the movements.

Hope this helps!

Answer 2

Primary sources are the fundamental, original sources of knowledge. So, in history, original manuscripts or records would be primary sources. A secondary source would be a book/article about these sources.

Some examples:

the declaration of independence could be a primary source whereas an article about it could be a secondary source.

a TV program could be a primary source and then an article in a scholarly journal analysing that tv program could be the secondary source.