This sampler is designed to help you understand the differences between Primary and Secondary historical sources, and to give you some help in determining useful websites. Click on each title to visit the websites and answer the questions.
1. What is the definition of a primary source?
2. What is the definition of a secondary source?
3. When using a search engine (such as Google) to find primary sources on John and Abigail Adams, what keywords would be appropriate to enter?
Why_Study_History_Through_Primary_Sources?
1. What are the problems involved in using information from newspaper articles and textbooks?
2. What happened in the nineteenth-century to make primary sources from the middle ages more accessible?
3. How does the story of the Scottish historian, Robertson, illustrate the dangers of using unreliable sources?
1. What questions help you place a source in its historical context?
2. What are the three ways to use a secondary source?
3. In an essay, where are you likely to find the author’s interpretation of an historical event?
4. In determining whether or not an author presents a convincing argument, what three questions should you ask?
1. What four things do you have to learn to do in order to use photographs as historical documents?
2. What steps should you take interpreting what is happening in an historical photo?
3. What steps should you take to verify the photo with other sources?