Historiography Site (Eleap)

 Username / password
 Materials for our course are uploaded in the site (ppt)
 Online Assignment #1 – (deadline November 28)
 Click the Discussion Board and post your comments about the film
“The Rise of Roman Empire”. Your reactions should include ideas
that you have learned from our discussions and readings. Example:
 Different kinds of history mentioned in the film
 Role of legends in writing history
 Different disciplines that are related with history
 How historians link the events in ancient period with contemporary
events?
 Sources/ resource persons tapped in creating a historical film
 Post your working Bibliography for your chosen topic

 Online Assignment #2 – (deadline December 5)

 Under Discussion Board, post your criticism on the book of Glenn
May entitled Reinventing a Hero
Using Sources
Primary source
 A primary source is a document or other
source of information that was created at or
near the time being studied, often by the
people being studied.
 In this sense primary does not mean superior.
 It refers to creation by the primary players, and
is distinguished from a secondary source,
which is a historical work, like a scholarly book
or article, built up from primary sources.
 Types of primary sources
The nature of a primary source depends on the historical
problem being studied.

 In political history, the most important primary sources are

likely to be documents such as official reports, speeches,
letters and diaries by participants, and eyewitness accounts
(as by a journalist who was there).
 In the history of ideas or intellectual history, the dominant
primary sources might be books of philosophy or scientific
literature.
 A study of cultural history could include fictional sources such
as novels or plays.
 In a broader sense primary sources also include physical
objects like photographs, newsreels, coins, paintings or
buildings created at the time.
 Historians may also take archaeological artifacts and oral
reports and interviews into consideration.
Written sources may be divided
into three main types.
 Narrative sources or literary sources tell a story
or message. They are not limited to fictional
sources (which can be sources of information for
contemporary attitudes), but include diaries, films,
biographies, scientific works, and so on.
 Diplomatic sources include charters and other
legal documents which usually follow a set format.
 Social documents are records created by
organizations, such as registers of births, tax
records, and so on.
Considerations…
 In the study of historiography, when the study of
history is itself subject to historical scrutiny, a
secondary source becomes a primary source.
 For a biography of a historian, that historian's
publications would be primary sources.
 Documentary films can be considered a
secondary source or primary source, depending
on how much the filmmaker modifies the
original sources.
 Using primary sources
 Ideally, a historian will use all available primary sources
created by the people involved, at the time being studied.
 In practice some sources have been destroyed, while
others are not available for research.
 Perhaps the only eyewitness reports of an event may be
memoirs, autobiographies, or oral interviews taken years
later.
 Sometimes the only documents relating to an event or
person in the distant past were written decades or
centuries later.
 This is a common problem in classical studies, where
sometimes only a summary of a book has survived.
 Using Sources
 The accuracy and objectiveness of primary sources is a
constant concern for historians.
 Participants and eyewitnesses may misunderstand events
or distort their reports (deliberately or unconsciously) to
enhance their own image or importance.
 Such effects can increase over time, and historians pay
special attention to memory problems and efforts by
participants to recall the past according to their own script.
 Government reports may be censored or altered for
propaganda or coverup purposes.
 Less frequently, later documents may be the more
accurate, as for example when a death leaves survivors
feeling more comfortable about telling embarrassing
details.
Using Sources
 Accurate history is based on primary sources, as
evaluated by the community of scholars, who
report their findings in books, articles and papers.
 Primary sources are often difficult to interpret and
may have hidden challenges.
 Obsolete meanings of familiar words and social
context are among the traps that await the
newcomer to historical studies.
 For this reason, interpretation of some primary
texts is best left to those with advanced college or
postgraduate training, or advanced self-study or
informal training.
Using Sources
 A primary source is not, by default, more authoritative
or accurate than a secondary source.
 Secondary sources often are subjected to peer review,
are well documented, and are often produced through
institutions where methodological accuracy is important
to the future of the author's career and reputation.
 A primary source like a journal entry, at best, only
reflects one person's take on events, which may or may
not be truthful, accurate, or complete.
 Historians subject both primary and secondary sources
to a high level of scrutiny.
Using Sources
 As a general rule, however, modern historians prefer to
go back to available primary sources and to seek new
(in other words, forgotten or lost) ones.
 Primary sources, whether accurate or not, offer new
input into historical questions and most modern history
revolves around heavy use of archives and special
collections for the purpose of finding useful primary
sources.
 A work on history is not likely to be taken seriously as
scholarship if it only cites secondary sources, as it
does not indicate that original research has been done.
Secondary source
 Secondary sources is a term used in historical
scholarship to refer to works of history written as
synthetic accounts, based on primary sources and
usually the consultation of other secondary sources.

 Ideal secondary sources are usually characterized

as both reporting events in the past as well as
performing the function of generalization, analysis,
synthesis, interpretation, and/or evaluation of the
events.
Secondary Sources
 An example of a secondary source would be
the biography of a historical figure which
constructed a coherent narrative out of a
variety of primary source documents, such as
letters, diaries, newspaper accounts, and
official records.
 It would also likely utilize additional secondary
sources (such as previously-written
biographies) as well.
 Most, but not all, secondary sources utilize
extensive citation.
 Secondary Sources
 The distinction between a primary and a secondary source
can often be one of usage. For example, biographies are
generally considered to be secondary sources, but if a
historian were writing a scholarly account of the history of
biographical writing itself during in a certain location or
period of time, they would become the primary sources for
the study—the biographies themselves would become the
documents to be analyzed as products of their time.
 Many secondary sources use other secondary sources as
primary sources, in part because all secondary sources
are themselves written "in their time" and within a given
scholarly and cultural context, a characteristic which is
usually more obvious in primary sources.
Secondary Sources
 Secondary sources are often peer
reviewed, and produced by institutions
where methodological accuracy is
important to the author's and publishing
house's, or research institute's,
reputation.
 Historians subject both primary and
secondary sources to a high level of
scrutiny.
Secondary Sources
 Many scholars have commented on the difficulty in
producing secondary source narratives from the
"raw data" which makes up the past.
 In any case, the question of the exact relation
between "historical facts" and the content of "written
history" has been a topic of discussion among
historians since at least the nineteenth century,
when much of the modern profession of history
came into being.
Secondary Sources
 As a general rule, modern historians prefer to
go back to primary sources, if available, as well
as seeking new ones, because primary
sources, whether accurate or not, offer new
input into historical questions, and most
modern history revolves around heavy use of
archives for the purpose of finding useful
primary sources.
 On the other hand, most undergraduate
research projects are limited to secondary
source material.
Tertiary source

 Where a primary source presents material from

a first-hand witness to a phenomenon, and a
secondary source provides commentary,
analysis and criticism of primary sources, a
tertiary source is a selection and compilation
of primary and secondary sources.
 Tertiary Sources
 Typical instances of tertiary sources are bibliographies,
library catalogs, directories, reading lists and survey
articles.
 Encyclopedias and textbooks are examples of materials
that typically embrace both secondary and tertiary
sources, presenting on the one hand commentary and
analysis, while on the other attempting to provide a
synoptic overview of the material available on the topic.
 For instance, the long articles of the Encyclopædia
Britannica certainly constitute the kind of analytical
material characteristic of secondary sources, while they
also attempt to provide the kind of comprehensive
coverage associated with tertiary sources.