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What is the difference between primary and secondary sources?

Primary sources are sources that come from firsthand witnesses of an event.  Primary sources can be from the specific time period (a journal from a World War II soldier, for example) or from a firsthand witness after the fact (a veteran’s memoir of his experiences in World War II, written after the war).

Secondary sources are sources that explain or analyze an event or a secondary source.  An example of a secondary source would be a book about soldiers’ general experiences during World War II.

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