Meaning and Relevance of History

Meaning:
According to Bill Nasson: History is the study of the past in order to understand
the meaning and dynamics of the relationship between cause and effect in the
overall development of human societies. Its key feature is its broad range of
inquiry, as it is as much concerned with wide perspectives, general
explanations, and fundamental questions, as with specific detail or events, and
the particular interpretation of sources and evidence. The claim of history is not
so much its capacity to capture immense detail, or to record knowledge of the
past, but to interpret, to handle a rich variety of sources in order to draw out
their general relevance or to reveal their general significance for human
understanding of why and how change occurs. Few historians would contest the
view that history is not a science as a discipline of study, but is more a branch of
the arts or humanities. It can be seen, at most, as a social science, and even then
could not be defined as scientific in any exact or predictive sense.

Relevance:
According to Penelope J. Corfield: History is inescapable. It studies the past and
the legacies of the past in the present. Far from being a 'dead' subject, it
connects things through time and encourages its students to take a long view of
such connections. In all cases, understanding History is integral to a good
understanding of the condition of being human. That allows people to build,
and, as may well be necessary, also to change, upon a secure foundation.
Neither of these options can be undertaken well without understanding the
context and starting points. All living people live in the here-and-now but it
took a long unfolding history to get everything to NOW. And that history is
located in time-space, which holds this cosmos together, and which frames both
the past and the present.

Distinction of Primary and Secondary Sources

Primary sources are firsthand, contemporary accounts of events created by

individuals during that period of time or several years later (such as
correspondence, diaries, memoirs and personal histories). These original records
can be found in several media such as print, artwork, and audio and visual
recording. Examples of primary sources include manuscripts, newspapers,
speeches, cartoons, photographs, video, and artifacts. Primary sources can be
described as those sources that are closest to the origin of the information. They
contain raw information and thus, must be interpreted by researchers.
Secondary sources are closely related to primary sources and often interpret
them. These sources are documents that relate to information that originated
elsewhere. Secondary sources often use generalizations, analysis, interpretation,
and synthesis of primary sources. Examples of secondary sources include
textbooks, articles, and reference books.

- Furman University

Repositories of Primary Sources

is a "listing of over 5000 websites describing holdings of manuscripts, archives,

rare books, historical photographs, and other primary sources for the research
scholar."

- William Madison Randall Library

Different kinds of primary sources

Some examples of primary source formats include:

 archives and manuscript material
 photographs, audio recordings, video recordings, films
 journals, letters and diaries
 speeches
 scrapbooks
 published books, newspapers and magazine clippings published at the
time
 government publications
 oral histories
 records of organizations
 autobiographies and memoirs
 printed ephemera
 artifacts, e.g. clothing, costumes, furniture
 research data, e.g. public opinion polls

- University of California