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Primary resources are essential for research in fields such as history, archaeology, and sociology, providing unfiltered information from the time period under study. They include artifacts, personal testimony, and original scientific studies. Accessing them can be difficult, but secondary resources can also be valuable.
A primary resource is a research resource closely linked to the subject under study. Various fields, including history, archeology, and sociology, utilize primary resources and distinguish between these secondary and tertiary resources. For many types of research, the core resource is considered the gold standard, providing information unfiltered by the opinions of others.
In history, primary resources are materials dating from the period under study. They can include letters, journals and artwork. These resources are valuable as they allow historians to study materials that appeared at the time, in contrast to secondary resources such as scholarly critiques of works of art from that period. Using primary resources, historians can learn more about how people during the period under investigation thought, worked, and processed the world around them.
Artifacts, as well as discussions about them, can be valuable primary resource material in archaeology. Archaeologists can study artifacts and examine writings about them produced by contemporaries to learn more about how they fit into society. Examining documents from people who found these artifacts in various periods can provide additional information about when the damage occurred and how, and how other artifacts from other cultures may have been received and examined.
A person can be a primary resource, as in the case of a witness to an event or the subject of an autobiography. Personal testimony in the form of diaries, letters, taped interviews, and other materials can be valuable for contextualizing events and gathering information about them from people who experienced them firsthand. Primary resources may also include items such as original scientific studies including demographic analysis, epidemiological studies in various populations, and other types of studies.
Accessing a primary resource can be difficult. Original documents and works of art are often fragile as well as valuable and are kept under protection. People may need to go to libraries and archives to access research material, and it helps to have academic credentials and establish relationships with curators, faculty, and librarians.
Secondary features can also be valuable in some settings. They can sometimes provide a starting point for people trying to do original research, as many have extensive lists of resources indicating where they gathered information. Reading analysis of a subject under study can also provide people with new insight into the subject, as well as ideas that they can incorporate into their research. People using these fonts should be careful and review them with a grain of salt, as the people who produced the fonts filter the material being presented and inevitably skew the presentation.
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