PRIMARY & SECONDARY SOURCES QUIZ 2020

 

Determine whether the sources below are Primary Source (P) or secondary Sources(S)

A Primary Source is information that was created at the same time as an event or by a person directly involved in the event. Diaries, speeches, letters, official records, autobiographies.

A Secondary Source is information from somewhere else or by a person not directly involved in the event. Encyclopedias, textbooks, book reports.

Part 1:

Instructions: Determine whether the following are primary or secondary sources. Explain your reasoning in 1-2 COMPLETE SENTENCES below each question.

Submit the original document. Make no changes, please.

 

1) A painting by Leonardo DaVinci.

2) A letter from John Smith about his meeting with the Powhatan Indians.

3) A text book describing the ‘the Great War’.

4) A college professor describing how the pilgrims lived.

5) A reporter describing his time in Iraq.

6) A friend giving a report about the Industrial Revolution’s changes to America.

7) The movie Titanic.

8) A biography about the sixteenth US President, Abraham Lincoln

9) An Indian writing about how his ancestors used to use all parts of the animals they hunted.

10) A documentary about how ‘Wizard of Oz’ changed movies forever.

11) A blog written by an employee describing what it is like working at Apple.

12) Neil Armstrong giving an interview about being the first man to walk on the moon.

13) A newspaper article describing last night’s storm.

14) An autobiography about Bill Gates.

15) The History Channel explaining how life was for a slave.

PART TWO:

Part 2:

Instructions: Determine whether the following are primary or secondary sources. Explain your reasoning in 1-2 COMPLETE SENTENCES below each question.

 

1) Rosa Parks describing her role in the Montgomery Alabama bus boycotts.

2) A journal written by Sequoyah about how he created the Cherokee alphabet.

3) A text book describing the civil war.

4) Another student reading a report about the tanks from World War 1.

5) An interview with a soldier about what it was like in Iraq.

6) A friend telling you about his teacher last year.

7) A movie showing the life of George Washington.

8) A biography about the second president, John Adams.

9) An Indian’s journal describing what it was like to meet white settlers for the first time.

10) A writer talking about their latest book.

11) A webpage talking about how life may have been in ancient Greece.

12) A radio recording of Walt Disney talking about Disney World.

13) A newspaper article from 2001 describing the great depression in the 1920’s.

14) An autobiography about Rod Sterling.

15) Your parent describing how Pilgrims came to America.

Part 3:

 

Directions:

You, the student are conducting research.

1. List 3 possible primary or secondary sources you can use for each research topic below.

2. Next, explain in 3-4 sentences why you can use those sources for the topic.

 

1. You are researching the current “trade war” between the US and China.

 

2. You are researching the eruption of Mount Vesuvius which buried the city of Pompeii.

 

3. The origin of Cinco de Mayo.

 

1 | Page

URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator.

 

A URL is just the internet address for any given webpage:

 

URL

 

Figure 1 URL

Understanding the component parts of a URL can be helpful in a variety of situations. Here are just a few reasons why understanding URLs is useful:

· The URL often reveals key information about a site

· An understanding of URLs provides the needed foundation for many advanced search strategies

· A heightened attention to URLs helps searchers recognize fraudulent sites

Locate the Protocol

Locate the protocol

The “protocol” is the first part of URL. Some browsers simplify how addresses are displayed by hiding the protocol:  for example, in Chrome and Firefox, http://www.aclu.org displays as aclu.org

The protocol https indicates that information sent through the page will be encrypted, and therefore harder to read if some third party intercepts the information. (The next time you are entering a username and password on a page, check for the “https” protocol.)

Locate the Domain Name

Locate the domain name

The “domain name” identifies the site that contains the page you are viewing. It appears just before the first single slash (/). If there is no single slash, then the domain name is whatever appears at the end of the URL.

For example, the following URLs all refer to pages on the American Civil Liberties Union site:

https://www.aclu.org/defending-our-rights/court-battles

https://www.aclu.org/issues/disability-rights

Being able to locate the domain name in a URL allows you to identify the entity that hosts the page you are viewing—a piece of information that is often crucial to understanding the nature of your source.

Recognize sub-directories

Recognize sub-directories

Elements of the URL that appear after the domain indicate different sub-directories. For example:

https://www.aclu.org/issues/criminal-law-reform

 

In the example above, “issues,” “criminal-law,” and “reform” are sub-directories of the domain aclu.org. Think of these as folders within folders.

Recognize sub-domains

Recognize subdomains

Subdomains are similar to sub-directories in that they provide a way for website developers to separate content, but subdomains appear before the domain name in the URL.  Don’t let this trip you up.  The domain name is still the content that appears pressed up against the first single slash (/) or—if there is no single slash—at the very end of the URL.

For example, the domain name in all of the following URLs is google.com

www.google.com books.google.com https://accounts.google.com/Login

Pay attention to the placement of the dots.  The following is not a Google page:

www.mgoogle.com

Here the domain is mgoogle.com, not google.com

Recognize top-level domains

Recognize top-level domains

 

In the domain name aclu.org, the “top-level domain” is .org.  The top-level domain .org was originally intended for use by non-profit organizations—and many non-profits continue to use it—but it is now open to anyone.

In the domain name amazon.com, the top-level domain is .com.  Short for “commercial,” .com is the most common top-level domain in the world and is now used for a wide variety of sites—not just the sites of commercial enterprises.

Some top-level domains have retained their original meanings and are especially helpful to know:

domain	description	example
.edu	university site	http://www.nu.edu
gov	government site	http://www.senate.gov
.mil	military site	http://www.army.mil

 

Some domains include a country domain extension—or “country code top level domain.”  Here are some examples:

code	country	example
.in	India	indianrail.gov.in
.de	Germany	www.spiegel.de
.ca	Canada	www.cbc.ca
.jp	Japan	www.nicovideo.jp
.uk	United Kingdom	www.ima.org.uk

 

Pay attention to country domain extensions. When present in a URL, they represent a core component of the domain. Note, for example, that hydra.com and hydra.com.gr are different domains. The two are unrelated sites run by unrelated entities.  For a comprehensive list of top-level domains, consult the following:

· IANA Root Zone Database

 

Use your understanding of URLs to enhance your web searching

Once you understand URLs, certain kinds of advanced search strategies become easier to conceptualize, remember, and implement—for example, filtering by domain and top-level domain.

Filter by top-level domain

Filter by top-level domain

If you know that the kind of information you are seeking is most likely to appear on a site with a particular type of top-level domain, you can restrict your search to this type of site using the site: search operator.

For example, if you are seeking government documents on the topic of student loans, then a search for student loans site:gov will return only results with the top-level domain gov, filtering out a large number of sites that are not relevant to your research needs.

 

Filter by domain

Filter by domain If you know the domain of the site on which your information will appear, you can use site: to search only that site.

For example, a search for sample tests site:dmv.ca.gov will return only pages located on the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) website (the domain of which is dmv.ca.gov). The site: operator works in all major search engines (Google, Bing, Baidu, DuckDuckGo, etc.).

 

 

Adapted from Christine Photinos, National University via a Creative Commons License

 

Domain Name

 

 

Sub-directories