SAIINT MARY’S UNIVERSITY

3700 Bayombong, Nueva Vizcaya

SCHOOL OF TEACHER EDUCATION AND HUMANITIES
Social Sciences and Philosophy Department

A. But what are sources?

Sources are objects (tangible objects) from the past or testimony concerning the past on
which historians depend in order to create their own depiction of that past (Howell and
Prevenier,).
Sources of information are often categorized as primary or secondary depending upon
their There
originality. are generally two types of sources
(https://www.sccollege.edu/Library/Pages/Primary-Sources.aspx)

1. Primary Sources
A primary source
provides direct or firsthand
evidence about an event, object,
person, or work of art. Primary
sources provide the original
materials on which other
research is based and enable
students and other researchers
to get as close as possible to
what actually happened during
a particular event or time
period. Published materials
can be viewed as primary
resources if they come from the
time period that is being
discussed, and were written or
produced by someone with
first-hand experience of the
event. Often primary sources reflect the individual viewpoint of a participant or observer.
Primary sources can be written or non-written (sound, pictures, artifacts, etc.). In scientific
research, primary sources present original thinking, report on discoveries, or share new
information.

Examples of primary sources:

 Autobiographies and memoirs
 Diaries, personal letters, and correspondence
 Interviews, surveys, and fieldwork
 Internet communications on email, blogs, listservs, and newsgroups
 Photographs, drawings, and posters
 Works of art and literature
 Books, magazine and newspaper articles and ads published at the time
 Public opinion polls
 Speeches and oral histories
 Original documents (birth certificates, property deeds, trial transcripts)
 Research data, such as census statistics
 Official and unofficial records of organizations and government agencies
 Artifacts of all kinds, such as tools, coins, clothing, furniture, etc.
 Audio recordings, DVDs, and video recordings
 Government documents (reports, bills, proclamations, hearings, etc.)
 Patents
 Technical reports
 Scientific journal articles reporting experimental research results
2. Secondary sources describe, discuss, interpret, comment upon, analyze, evaluate,
summarize, and process primary sources. A secondary source is generally one or
more steps removed from the event or time period and are written or produced after
the fact with the benefit of hindsight. Secondary sources often lack the freshness and
immediacy of the original material. On occasion, secondary sources will collect,
organize, and repackage primary source information to increase usability and speed of
delivery, such as an online encyclopedia. Like primary sources, secondary materials
can be written or non-written (sound, pictures, movies, etc.).

Examples of secondary sources:

 Bibliographies
 Biographical works
 Reference books, including dictionaries, encyclopedias, and atlases
 Articles from magazines, journals, and newspapers after the event
  Literature reviews and review articles (e.g., movie reviews, book reviews)
 History books and other popular or scholarly books
 Works of criticism and interpretation
 Commentaries and treatises
 Textbooks
 Indexes and abstracts

B. Source Criticism:
According to Martha Howell and Walter Prevenier, From Reliable Sources, (43-44):
In order for a source to be used as evidence in a historical argument, certain basic
matters about its form and content must be settled:
First, it must be (or must be made) comprehensible at the most basic level of language,
handwriting, and vocabulary. ....
Second, the source must be carefully located in place and time: when was it composed,
where, in what country or city, in what social setting, by which individual? Are these apparent
"facts" of composition correct?—that is, is the date indicated, let us say, in a letter written from
the front by Dwight Eisenhower to his wife Mamie the date it was actually written? Is the place
indicated within the source the actual place of composition? If the document does not itself
provide such evidence—or if there is any reason to doubt the ostensible evidence—is there
internal evidence that can be used to determine a probable date, or a time period within which
the document was created? Can we tell from the content of the document itself or its
relationship to other similar documents where it was composed?
Third, the source must be checked for authenticity. Is it what it purports to be, let us say
an agreement for the transfer of land from a secular lord to the church or—to mention one of the
famous cases of forgery from recent history—the personal diary of Adolph Hitler? Can we tell
from the handwriting, the rhetoric, anachronisms of content, from the ink or the watermark or
the quality of the parchment—or from the typeface or the electronic coding of the tape—that the
document was not composed where it presents itself as having been composed? Is it, perhaps, a
forgery from the period, a forgery from a later period, or simply a case of mislabeling by
archivists?
At this point Howell and Prevenier list the principal tools that historians use in order to
authenticate the sources:
1. Paleography, the study of handwriting (pages 44-46).
2. Diplomatics, the study of charters (page 46).
3. Archaeology, the study of artifacts (pages 46-50).
4. Statistics, the study of numerical data (pages 50-55).
 5. Miscellaneous tools (page 56):
o Sigillography, the study of seals.
o Chronology, the study of timekeeping.
o Codicology, the study of handwritten books.
o Papyrology, the study of papyrus texts.
o Epigraphy, the study of inscriptions.
o Heraldry, the study of coats of arms.
o Numismatics, the study of coinage.
o Linguistics, the study of language.
o Genealogy, the study of family relationships.
o Prosopography, the study of names and careers, or the use of biographical data
to construct group portraits.

Further Martha Howell and Walter Prevenier, From Reliable Sources, (60) note:
Sources must be evaluated not only in terms of those external characteristics on which
we have been focusing, the questions of where, when, and by whom a source was created and
whether it is "genuine" or not. Traditionally, they have also been evaluated in terms of what
historians have thought of as internal criteria.
Howell and Prevenier enumerate the chief elements of source criticism as:
1. The genealogy of the document (pages 61-62), whether it is the original, a
copy, or a copy of a copy.
2. The genesis of the document (pages 62-63), the circumstances, authority,
and events in or under which it was produced.
3. The originality of the document (pages 63-64), whether it is innovating or
merely passing on already current information.
4. The interpretation of the document (pages 64-65), the extraction of some
kind of meaning from it.
5. The authorial authority of the document (pages 65-66), the relation of its
author to the subject matter, whether eyewitness, earwitness, or even
further removed.
6. The competence of the observer (pages 66-68); is the author qualified to
report and capable of reporting critically and with comprehension?
7. The trustworthiness of the observer (page 68); is the author lying or telling
what he or she believes is the truth?