Analysis of Documents
Trygve Mathisen · 2025
Historians have for long been accustomed to classifying documentary materials as secondary and primary sources. A primary source is the testimony of one who has personally observed the phenomenon of which the source treats. A secondary source is the testimony of one who has received information about the subject in question from an observer. He is, so to speak, a secondhand informant. Here we shall use the term secondary sources to denote scholarly studies which are based on an examination of primary sources, no matter whether they are published in the form of books or as articles in learned periodicals.