UPX Material - University of Phoenix



University of Phoenix Material

Historical Sources

Historians study records of the past to understand and explain the stories of the people and events of earlier times. These records, or historical sources, form the core of the scholarly practice of history. There are two types of sources on which historians generally rely: primary and secondary.

Primary Sources

Primary sources are first-hand accounts or records. Primary sources provide a view of historical events or people as witnessed by people who were actually there. Primary sources have not been interpreted by others, but use the words, sounds, or images of those present during a historical period. Primary sources often incorporate the interpretation or attitude of the individual who recorded the experience; different people may often record different impressions of a single event. Examples of primary sources include the following:

0. A letter written by Otto von Bismarck

0. A recording or libretto of a portion of Wilhelm Richard Wagner’s The Valkyrie

0. The recording or transcript of a speech given by Jacques Chirac

0. The transcript of an interview with an 18th-century factory worker

0. Property tax registers from Languedoc

0. A photograph of German troops moving through a devastated Polish town during the Nazi invasion

0. A reprint of a propaganda poster

0. The last will and testament of a Norwegian merchant

0. A print of Paul Nash’s We Are Making a New World

0. A translation of the diary Anne Frank kept during the German occupation of the Netherlands

0. A Punch cartoon lampooning Benjamin Disraeli

Historians prefer to view original versions of primary sources—viewing the enormous mural Guernica or reading the original Candide may provide insights overlooked in photographs or translations. However, faithful photographic representations, diagrams, translations, and reprints are acceptable primary sources.

Secondary Sources

Historians also make extensive use of secondary sources—sources in which another person analyzes or interprets information from primary sources. Such secondary sources are valuable in making sense of the documentary record. Imagining trying to piece together what happened in World War II without prior knowledge and with just boxes of letters from soldiers may illustrate the value of a secondary source that might illuminate the significance of the letters’ contents. Examples of secondary sources include the following:

• A New York Times article from 1937 synthesizing information from four primary sources about the bombing of Guernica into a single article

• The writing of Mark Kishlansky, Patrick Geary, and Patricia O’Brien in Civilization in the West

• A PBS documentary about the Holocaust

• An article by a professor of history published in a historical journal

• A literary review of Benjamin Disraeli’s Vivian Grey

The creation of a secondary source requires value judgments about what information to include and how to interpret the information. Such value judgments may be subject to prejudices, preconceived ideas, or mistaken assumptions. A documentary film or other secondary source may be edited in such a way to present only one viewpoint of a complex event. The prioritization of information and interpretation in a secondary source is sometimes not the same as the needs for a research project. Students of history must critically evaluate secondary sources and select the most appropriate information.

Scholarly Sources

Scholarly sources are particularly reputable books, journals, and articles that have gone through the peer-review process. The assurance that a scholarly text has undergone careful editorial review and conforms to academic standards within the field lends confidence to readers and strengthens written arguments. Scholarly sources are widely used in all fields of higher learning, and additional information about scholarly sources and the peer-review process may be found in the Library Handbook of the University Library. The University Library’s three major databases—EBSCOhost, Gale PowerSearch, and ProQuest—allow users to limit search results to scholarly or peer-reviewed material.

A monograph is a scholarly book about one particular event, set of related events, or era in history. To search in the University Library for published monographs, use Google Scholar, which is accessible from the Biographies and History databases, or review abstracts in Oxford Scholarship Online, which is accessible in the Books, Dissertations, and Theses section of the University Library.

Newspapers and Magazines

Newspapers and magazines include a combination of primary and secondary source material. News articles, editorials, advice columns, opinion pieces, critical reviews, transcripts of speeches, the text of important documents, photographs, and even advertisements may inform historical research.

News articles integrate information from various sources and interpret it for the reader. Because of this interpretation, they are usually secondary sources about the topic of the article. However, newspaper articles may serve as primary sources about attitudes and media coverage about a particular event or topic. For example, an article in last week’s San Diego Union-Tribune about the allied Normandy landings of 1944 is a secondary source about the landings, but it could serve as a primary source about contemporary American media coverage of World War II. Some news articles are eyewitness accounts—look for a statement in the text or headline indicating that the reporter witnessed the event, or review the text for the use of the first person indicated by I, me, and my.

Editorials reveal the opinion of an editorial board and the influences that shape popular opinion. They serve historians not as a record of the event about which they are written, but rather as a record of reaction to that event. The worldwide editorial condemnation that followed the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, for example, demonstrates the broad popular opinion, globally against these acts of violence.

Advice columns, opinion pieces, and critical reviews are the original words of an individual or group, and reveal their insights as a primary source. Such works often are not written by those witnessing historical events, but offer a reinterpretation of information the author or authors have received from another source. A letter to the editor of the Daily Mail about the victory of German troops at the Masurian Lakes would be a primary source about the reaction of the British public to this battle, but it would be a secondary source—and not a very reliable secondary source—about the battle itself.

Transcripts of speeches and the text of documents such as legislative bills or treaties provide valuable primary resources for historians studying political history. Often, however, such speeches and texts are created by politicians removed from the events about which they speak and write, so a historian must carefully analyze a text and its context to determine whether it can be used as a primary source that is an eyewitness account of history.

Newspapers and magazines are also an excellent source for photographs of newsworthy events and individuals. While there are instances of altered or staged photographs appearing in the media, most photographs in mainstream publications are faithful representations of the person or event they portray, and these photographs act as a primary source. Analyze photographs in newspapers if you seek to use them as primary sources; their captions represent the interpretation of someone working for the publication, and are a secondary source.

Advertisements, too, may inform historical research. From single-line classified ads to contemporary glossy inserts, advertising may reveal volumes about economic and social behavior, as well as the evolution of marketing. Be a cautious consumer of advertising. The ads are not primary sources about the advertised material. Other potentially valuable information in newspapers and magazines include maps, obituaries, stock prices, poetry, artwork, comic strips, and other documentary evidence.

Finding Primary Sources in the University Library

The ProQuest database in the University Library has an extensive collection of full-text historical publications dating from as early as 1851. To access historical magazines, journals, dissertations, and theses, follow these instructions:

1. Click the Library tab.

2. Select Article Databases, and Major.

3. Choose ProQuest.

4. Type in your search term and in the Date Range field, select Specific Date Range.

5. Enter the start and end date for your search, then click the Search button.

ProQuest is also home to full-text historic newspapers, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Christian Science Monitor, and The Wall Street Journal. To search the historical newspaper archives, follow these instructions:

1. Click the Library tab.

2. Select Choose Databases by Subject.

3. Choose Biographies and History.

4. Select ProQuest Historic Newspapers from the Article Databases—Specialized section.

5. Enter the start and end date for your search, then click the Search button.

Note. If you wish to limit your result to one of the five available historic newspapers, click the Database field and select your chosen paper from the News section.

A third source for primary sources in the University Library is Original Sources from Encyclopedia Brittanica. This collection of over 350,000 primary source documents includes the words of historical figures from classical Greece to the present. To browse or search these primary sources, follow these instructions:

1. Click the Library tab.

2. Select Choose Databases by Subject.

3. Choose Biographies and History.

4. Select Original Sources from Brittanica from the Encyclopedias and Dictionaries section.

5. Click on the introduction screen to go to the Main Desk, where you may browse by subject-area or conduct a search.

................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download