A historical source is something that tells us about History.

It may be a document, a
picture, a sound recording, a book, a cinema film, a television programme or an object.
A source is anything that has been left behind by the past. It might be a document, but it
might alternatively be a building or a picture or a piece of ephemera a train ticket
perhaps or a plastic cup. They are called 'sources' because they provide us with
information which can add to the sum of our knowledge of the past. Sources only become
historical evidence, however, when they are used by a historian to make a point.

Primary Sources and Secondary Sources

Primary sources are original materials that have not been altered or distorted in any
way.[1] Information for which the writer has no personal knowledge is not primary,
although it may be used by historians in the absence of a primary source. In the study of
history as an academic discipline.
Photographs are a very common type of primary source. They can serve to document:

events or relationships in a persons life

the history of an organization, institution, municipality, country, or social group

socially significant events

Maps

Secondary Sources
The most common type of source you are likely to encounter is a secondary source. A
secondary source is any source about an event, period, or issue in history that was
produced after that event, period or issue has passed.
History text book
Journal Articles
Biographies

Importance of Oral Sources

Oral history is the collection and study of historical information about individuals,
families, important events, or everyday life using audiotapes, videotapes, or transcriptions
of planned interviews. These interviews are conducted with people who participated in or
observed past events and whose memories and perceptions of these are to be preserved as
an aural record for future generations. Oral history strives to obtain information from
different perspectives and most of these cannot be found in written sources.
1. Articles on families and childhood in which children were portrayed as active actors

in history
2. Projects funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund.

Material Source
Material from a secondary critical source is used appropriately in our first example
to support the critical point which is being made. The quotation is adequately
integrated into the body of the essay. The essayist in our second example uses
secondary material in order to introduce a particular critical perspective on the
subject being discussed (i.e. the nature and status of metaphysical poetry)
Written Sources
Recorded history or written history is a historical narrative based on a
written record or other documented communication. Recorded history can be
contrasted with other narratives of the past such as mythological or oral
traditions. The earliest chronologies date back to the two earliest civilizations:
the ancient Sumerians of Mesopotamia and the Early Dynastic Period of
Egypt[3] which emerged independently of each other from roughly 3500 B.C