Research Guides: Online Learning for Information Literacy: Teaching with Primary Sources

General Exercise for Primary Sources

Analyzing a Primary Source

This exercise can be used to assist students with considering a primary source through several lenses: physical description, author/creator, audience, message/opinion, connection to research, and researcher bias. This can be adjusted for synchronous online classes with students working in small groups with a digital object or as an asynchronous assignment in Moodle.

Outcomes

Interpret and evaluate primary sources
Identify questions specific primary sources can help or not help to answer
Identify questions for further investigation/analysis
Describe own potential bias as a researcher when interpreting specific sources

Primary Source Analysis Exercise
A series of questions in six areas: physical description, author/creator, audience, message/opinion, connection to research, and researcher biases.

Public Collections of Exercises

Library of Congress - Teachers' Guides and Analysis Tool
The Library of Congress provides a great collection of exercises for guiding students to analyze a variety of primary source types, such as motion pictures, political cartoons, newspapers, oral histories, sound recordings, maps, and photographs/prints.
National Archives (US) - Educator Resources
The National Archives maintains a collection of document analysis worksheets for a wide variety of source types. These can be adjusted as needed for undergraduate students.
Docs Teach (National Archives)
A collection of exercises created by educators using materials from the National Archives. Supports activity searching by keyword. Searches can be refined to "College University" level.