Children will often be asked by their teachers to carry out research into a particular topic, such as World War II, life in Viking times, the planets; they might be asked to find information on a topic of their own choosing. Depending on the project, they might need to speak to relatives, visit places, send off for information, use books, or find information using the internet.

What they may not consider, unless they are asked to, is where all this information comes from. How do people actually know things? How do people who write books and websites find the information to put in them? How do you know whether what you read on a website or in a book is true? How do you know who put a particular web site together? These are all important questions which are all part of 'information literacy' - the awareness of where information comes from and how much we can trust it - a skill which is becoming ever more important in our information age.

This unit introduces children to the idea of primary sources (real objects or people who actually observed or experienced an event) and secondary sources (those who have obtained their information from someone else). It explains how primary sources are more reliable, but how, even with primary sources, a lot depends on the person's viewpoint. A good way to be sure about a fact is to get the information from more than one source - but even then, the two sources may both have got their information from the same original source!