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LESSON 3 Historical Sources

Primary sources provide direct evidence about an event from the time period and were created during or shortly after the event by direct participants or eyewitnesses. Secondary sources are created later and interpret or analyze primary sources. Historians evaluate sources based on factors like date of creation, authorship, and integrity to determine reliability. Both primary and secondary sources require careful evaluation of authenticity, location in time and place, and consistency of details.

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390 views14 pages

LESSON 3 Historical Sources

Primary sources provide direct evidence about an event from the time period and were created during or shortly after the event by direct participants or eyewitnesses. Secondary sources are created later and interpret or analyze primary sources. Historians evaluate sources based on factors like date of creation, authorship, and integrity to determine reliability. Both primary and secondary sources require careful evaluation of authenticity, location in time and place, and consistency of details.

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CyLyn Pets
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DISTINCTION BETWEEN

PRIMARY AND SECONDARY


SOURCES
PRIMARY and SECONDARY SOURCES

PRIMARY SOURCES
➢ These are the things that were created or in
➢ It provides direct or firsthand evidence use during the period which is being
about an event, object, person, or work studied.
of art.
➢ These sources are actual records that have
➢ It contains “firsthand’ knowledge about survived from the past.
historical events, figures, and people.
➢ It provides compelling and direct
evidence of human activity.

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SECONDARY SOURCES

It is something that was not made by someone or by a group of


people who participated in the historical era which is being
studied.
These are usually created by historians and scholastic writers
based on their interpretation of the primary sources.
These are sources of historical data which are created later or
after the historical event which is being studied and provided by
the people who were not present in that event.
It describes, discuss, interpret, comment upon, analyze,
evaluate, summarize, and process sources.

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Examples of Primary and Secondary Sources

PRIMARY Photographs SECONDARY New articles

SOURCES: Speeches SOURCES: Scholarly


Videos Journals
Autobiography Biography
Legal Transcriptions
Memoirs Encyclopedia
Documents Almanacs
Eyewitness Textbooks
Ornaments Dictionaries
Accounts Thesis
Clothing
Diary Dissertations
Tools
Fossils News Reports
Relics Movies
Letters

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Therefore, primary and secondary sources should be evaluated. Most
scholars use the following questions in evaluating the validity and credibility
of sources of hitorical accounts:
1. How did the author know about the given details? Was the author present at
the event? How soon was the author able to gather the details of the event?
2. Where did the information come from? Is it a personal experience, an
eyewitness account, or a report made by another person?
3. Did the author conclude based on a single source, or on many sources of
evidence?

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If the evaluation of an available source shows any indication that it is an
interpretative work rather than a factual firsthand account, it is considered as many
a secondary source. Thus, in conducting historical research, it is important to
identify first whether the available sources are primary or secondary sources. This
is to determine how reliable and helpful these sources are.

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EVALUATION of PRIMARY and
SECONDARY SOURCES
Garraghan (1950) identified six points of inquiries to evaluate the
authenticity of a primary source:

DATE – When was it produced?


LOCALIZATION – Where did it originate?
AUTHORSHIP – Who wrote it?
ANALYSIS – What pre-existing material served as the
basis for its production?
INTEGRITY – What was its original form?
CREDIBILITY – What is the evidential value of its
content?
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LOUIS GOTTSCHALK (1969)
- He emphasized that it is impossible for
historians to avoid using secondary sources
due to difficulty in accessing primary sources.
- Most often, historians depend on secondary
sources to improve their background
knowledge of contemporary documents and
detect any errors they may contain.

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Gottschalk suggested that secondary sources must only be used for :

1. Deriving the setting 3. Acquiring 4. Deriving


wherein the quotations or interpretations with a
contemporary citations from view of testing and
evidence will dit in the contemporary or improving them but
grand narrative of other sources; and not accepting them
history; as outright truth.
2. Getting leads to other
bibliographic data;

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MARTHA HOWELL and WALTER
PREVENIER (2001)
- Stated that before any source can be considered as
evidence in a historical argument, it must satisfy
three preconditions.

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THE THREE PRECONDITIONS OF MARTHA and WALTER:

FIRST, it must SECOND, the THIRD, through


be source must be the first two
comprehensible carefully preconditions,
at the most located in the authenticity
basic level of accordance with of the source
vocabulary, place and time. must always be
language, and checked and
handwriting. counterchecked
before being
accepted as a
credible source
in any historical
findings.
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SEVEN FACTORS identified by HOWELL and PREVENIER (2001) which
evaluate in terms of internal criteria are the following:

THE GENEALOGY OF THE DOCUMENT – refers to the


development of the document. The document may be original, a copy, or
a copy of the copy;
THE GENESIS OF THE DOCUMENT – includes the situations
and the authorities during the document’s production;
THE ORIGINALITY OF THE DOCUMENT – includes the
nature of the document whether it is an eye/earwitness account ore
merely passing of existing information;
THE INTERPRETATION OF THE DOCUMENT – pertains to
deducing meaning from the document.

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SEVEN FACTORS identified by HOWELL and PREVENIER (2001)
which evaluate in terms of internal criteria are the following:

THE AUTHORIAL AUTHORITY OF THE DOCUMENT


– refers to the author’s capabilities and qualifications to critically
comprehend and report information; and
THE TRUSTWORTHINESS OF THE OBSERVER –
refers to the author’s integrity-whether he or she fabricates or
reports truthfully.

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