Sources of history—analysis of authentic and less authentic sources.

Sources are where historians get their information about what happened in the past.
As a student writing a paper about some aspect of history, we also will need to go to
sources. we cannot just write something from our own "feelings" or "experience. We
must instead use sources that record and describe past events and people. But using a
source we must be care full about its authenticity.

There are different sources. One basic division is between non-written (remains,
buildings, coins, statues, clothing, etc.) artifacts, and written documents (records, diaries,
newspapers, treaties, etc.). For most courses, we will only need to understand written
sources.

First kind of written sources of history is generalized surveys of a specific subject.

Such sources often include things like textbooks, handbooks, dictionaries, and
encyclopedias. Articles in these may be very accurate, many having been written by
specialists. This source is often the best place to begin research on a topic. Since
handbook articles often include useful bibliographies, they can show us where to begin
looking for useful other sources. And they often describe some of the basic historical
controversies, agreements and gaps in knowledge about its subject.

Second kind of written sources of history is usually produced by people who, after the
historical event have examined. Books, journals, and magazines are the most common,
and many are available in the college library or through inter-library loan. One of them
can be the research papers that produced by trained, professional historians who
specialize in a particular field of history. Historical training offers an assurance that solid
standards of quality have been upheld by being "refereed." Historians do this through
"peer review"--having other historians read and critique works before they are published.
The better publishers and scholarly journals do this, while some publishers and popular
magazines do not. Thus some history writing gains little respect from the majority of
history scholars and views with doubt.

Third kind is “sources from the internet”.

This source is using commonly and increasingly. But we should be wary of sources
drawn from the world wide web, since too many are produced by reckless amateurs.
Research on the internet is different from the traditional use of sources in libraries, most
of which have been carefully selected, validated, and organized by trained, professional
editors, librarians and professors. Through the internet and world wide web, information
from around the globe is only a few computer clicks distant. Out of this new technology
arises many problems for the researcher. One problem is the difficulty of finding useful

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information. The huge numbers of sites found by convenient search engines may be
inadequate for the research: either they contain material completely unrelated to the topic
or offer very little data that can be utilized in a research paper. But we can often easily
judge a site’s worth by the type or quantity of information offered. Or we may have to
skim a number of these sites until we begin to find useful information.

Except all above sources some other written source, which may be considered sources for
history are:

 Letters and diaries of participants or witnesses.

These are often private recollections, meant to be read only by the observer or one
or two friends. The most valuable of these sources are those which were written
as close to the time of the event as possible.
 Travelers accounts. This source is linked with or an other kind of above
mentioned source. In study of history travelers accounts are another great source
of information from the past. Travelers like Marko polo wrote a lot of information
about culture, art and craft, architecture and literature of the places they visited.
 Memoirs and autobiographies.
These may have been meant as public documents, or may have been written to be
shared with friends and family. They may have been written some years after the
event you’re interested in and may represent the writer’s rationalizations or
attempts to make a coherent narrative out of the events.
 Interviews, speeches, memos written at the time.
These are likely to be more public documents and may be less revealing.
 Government and church records.
Censuses, court records, birth, death, marriage and burial records are important
sources of information for social and demographic history.
 Literature.
The fiction plays and poetry of a period can reflect common attitudes and beliefs
of the time. These sources are used cautiously by social historians.

It is important to realize that recorded history is only one of several types of research or
information sources that can contribute to our knowledge of a particular event, or period
of time in the past. Other important an non written sources are oral history and
archaeological excavations and analysis.(archaeology is included in both written and
non written sources)

Olral History

There is a rich "history" in the world preserved in the form of stories and legends that
extends back into time before memory or the time that we can say “precontact” or

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“prehistoric”. But we can not rely only on this source. Because there is a doubt in its
authenticity. Stories and legends can be incomplete information for a research. But these
are often the only way in which the memories of older members of communities have
been preserved. They can be especially important sources of information from aboriginal
communities.

Sound and visual recordings.

Where these are available, they can be valuable sources of information both for events
and as documents reflecting the social life and customs of the last century and a half.
Photographs, films, recorded sounds are included in this category.

Archaeology defined as the study of the human past through material remains, with the
aim of ordering and describing the events of the past and explaining their meaning.
Archaeology is that source which includes in both categories written and not written
because the records of archaeological studies available in written form and Artifacts are
non written material. Buildings, tools, clothing, toys, furniture and other household items
can all reveal aspects of the lives of the people who made and used them. This sources
bring us closest to the actual event. We remain ignorant about the past, because people
did not record events. Or many records have been lost to history.

Contemporary paintings and drawings can also be used to show how clothing was
worn, how artifacts were used, and how people wished to be represented.

Architecture is another authentic source of history of past. Existing religious buildings

such as tombs , mosques, temples and churches and other secular buildings can be the
source of history of the people who lived in them or it can be the source of information
about their culture, their philosophy of life and death or even about religion.

The records of geology, geography, biology, and the environmental researches can be the
sources to understand the facts of history.

The authenticity and less authenticity of sources depends upon , what type of research we
are doing? Or what is the topic? And what kind of resources available to us?

If we have documentation or written record for our research then authenticity

depends on these questions. What is the document’s ostensible or intended purpose?
(Interpret for style, rhetoric, word-choice, allegory, satire: literal vs. real meaning). Is the
audience popular, scholarly, political? Written with anger, apology, justification,
argumentation, partisanship?

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How accurate is the author? (Depending on the author’s competence, reliability, bias,
prejudice, underlying assumptions, distance between event and record, its accuracy may
range from plausible-probable-certain).

What is the document’s content? (Analysis for connotation vs. denotation, consistency vs.
self-contradictions, fact vs. opinion).

How does it compare with what else is known or written by the author and/or with other
reliable sources? (Corroboration, logic, common sense).

What do modern scholars say about the source? (Current editions and historiography).

Unpublished material, which is not checked or proved by any referee or institute or not
written by any professional researcher of historian will be less authentic. The irrelevant
material or which do not have much correct information will prove less authentic.

Even an artifact like a tool or a house hold thing (which is the most important source of
information in archaeology) can be less authentic if the people transferred it to
somewhere else without recording of the exact information of its place and condition and
we find it without any recoded information.

So we can say that recorded and proved sources by any specialist historian or institutions
can be the authentic sources of information for making a history of anything else.