Guidelines for Evaluating Primary Documents

Primary documents are the raw materials of history. They are small pieces that the historian hopes to assemble to create a larger, coherent picture, and they must be examined carefully to determine where they fit. Each piece provides some information in itself, but it must also be placed in its proper context. As you examine documents for any historical research project, keep a number of questions and issues in mind.

1. Determine whether a given document is a primary or secondary source. Historians use both kinds of sources in their research to answer questions about the past.

Primary documents are records and evidence that have survived from the past. Some primary documents are materials produced by people who were directly involved, either as participants or witnesses in the event or topic that you are studying. These can be diaries, letters, newspaper articles from the time, speeches, interviews, photographs, or film or videotape recordings. Official records such as census data, marriage records, and police and court records are also primary documents. Material objects such as furniture, clothing, and toys can also yield important evidence about the culture and attitudes of the past.

Secondary documents are books and scholarly articles that interpret and explain primary sources.  Secondary works are extremely helpful in trying to understand primary evidence, but you should examine the original materials themselves whenever possible in order to draw your own conclusions.

Sometimes secondary sources can be used as primary evidence. For example, U.S. history textbooks written in the 1950s are secondary works; they collect primary evidence to tell a story of the past. However, they also reflect the biases and assumptions of the 1950s, when fear of the Soviet Union pervaded American society. If you are interested in the ways Cold War anticommunism shaped Americans’ views of the past, you could use those textbooks as primary documents.

2. Carefully evaluate and analyze primary documents that you work with to understand each document’s value and limitations, detect the biases embedded in each document, and glean the information that you need from each source. As Mary Lynn Rampola points out, “If sources always told the truth, the historian’s job would be much easier-- and also rather boring,” (A Pocket Guide to Writing in History, 1998).  Different types of documents present different interpretive challenges. Other modules in this series contain guidelines for interpreting visual and aural sources. This section focuses primarily on written materials, but the same questions can be asked of any primary document.

To understand the value and limitations of a source, try to answer the following questions: Is this source a firsthand account, written by a witness or participant? Was it written at the time of the event or later? Is the account based on interviews or evidence from those directly involved?

Be alert to the biases imbedded in primary sources. Every document is biased, whether deliberately or unconsciously, by the point of view of the person who wrote it. Determine as much as possible about the author of the document and his or her relationship to the events and issues described. Did the author have a stake in how an event was remembered? Did he or she want this issue to be perceived in a particular way? Also consider for whom the document was created. Was the author writing for a specific audience? Was the document meant to be private, like a diary; to communicate with a small audience, like a letter or internal report; or to reach a bigger audience, like a speech or a published autobiography? Take note of the author’s vocabulary. What judgments or assumptions are imbedded in his or her choice of words?

Compare the accounts of one event provided by different primary sources to evaluate the reliability of each document.  When sources conflict, consider possible explanations for the differences. When they concur, the account provided may be more accurate – especially if the authors have different points of view. Do not assume that one type of document is necessarily more reliable than another. A published newspaper article, for example, may reflect the biases of a reporter or editor. An impassioned speech may contain kernels of factual information.

Working with primary sources offers a remarkable window into other worlds, as well as an opportunity to construct your own vision of the past. Careful evaluation and interpretation of those sources is at the core of the historian’s craft.