Professor Robert W. Brown of the University of North Carolina at Pembroke has prepared an excellent guide for his students that I recommend to you. It is called Reading a Primary Source . Another page with good suggestions for the amateur historian is Dohistory , which was created by the Film Study Center at Harvard University. The entire site is interesting, but you will especially want to read Using Primary Resources . A secondary source interprets and analyzes primary sources.
Secondary sources are one step removed from the event.
In addition to using the UR Library Catalog to identify secondary sources, you may also want to use the online databases and periodical indexes listed on the History Resources web page. If you would like assistance in finding further primary sources related to your topic, consult a Reference Librarian .