SourceS for frameworkS of world HiStory
JAVIER VIDAL FUERTESvisibility
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AI-generated Abstract
This work explores the role of primary sources in historical interpretation and presents a framework for understanding them. It argues that primary sources are essential for reconstructing historical narratives, and that historians are required to interpret these documents by establishing contextual frameworks. Through two key questions—what constitutes a primary source and how to interpret it—the text elaborates on the complexities and methodologies involved in historical interpretations, ultimately advocating for the use of an explicit frameworks model for testing and validating historical evidence.
Related papers
Sources for the Historian
Research Journal of Indian Cultural, Social & Philosophical Stream (ISSN: 0973-8762), 2014
Sources of Historical Study, Primary, Secondary and Tertiary, Written and Oral, Evaluation of Sources
The word History originated from Greek word ἱστορία, historia, meaning "inquiry, knowledge acquired by investigation"1. It is the study of the past, particularly how it relates to humans. It is an umbrella term that relates to past events as well as the memory, discovery, collection, organization, presentation, and interpretation of information about these events.2 In a broader sense, “history is a systematic account of the origin and development of the humankind, a record of the unique events and movements in its life, it is an attempt to recapture however imperfectly, that which is, in a sense, lost forever.3 Any leftover of the past, which adds to our knowledge of that past, can be considered as its source. Hence History definitely has some sources.
The Power and Potential of Primary Sources
The Reading Teacher, 2012
This article describes how infusing primary sources into instruction helps students develop critical literacy skills as well as more complex understandings of the world. P rimary sources are original textual (e.g., letters, diaries, speeches) and nontextual sources (e.g., photographs, drawings) of information that are available to learn more about a time period, person, or particular event. They are the "raw materials of history" providing "unfiltered access" into the past (Library of Congress, n.d.). These differ from secondary sources, which highlight "accounts or interpretations of events created by someone without firsthand experience" (Library of Congress, n.d.). Although used regularly in middle and high school classrooms (
Module Handbook - Primary Sources for the Historian
Individual strand designed and taught for HIST1300: Primary Sources for the Historian on 'The Chronicles of Froissart and the Fourteenth Century'.
Reasoning with and/or about sources? The use of primary sources in Flemish secondary school history education
Historical Encounters, 2017
Working with sources in secondary school history education has become a common practice over the last few decades. However, researchers have concluded that teaching practices relating to the educational use of sources cause difficulties. Teachers often only examine sources for/in relation to their content, and tend to ignore author and context information in the analysis of the source. This paper reports on an empirical study focusing on how primary sources are dealt with in Flemish secondary school history education, in which the standards only make general reference to the use of sources. It focuses on whether primary sources are used to prompt reasoning with and/or about sources, and includes an examination of both the kind of primary sources that are used, and the provided source and context information. 88 classroom history lessons in the three stages of secondary education, involving 51 teachers, were observed and analyzed. Analysis shows that primary sources play an important part in the lessons. Overall, 21% of all primary sources were used for illustration, 55% to reason with sources and thus to foster students’ substantive knowledge, and 24% to reason about and thus foster students’ strategic knowledge. Important differences and similarities regarding the educational use of primary sources between the three stages of secondary education are also found, and further explained and discussed.
Primary Sources of Data and Secondary Sources of Data
It is evident from the above discussion that primary data is an original and unique data, which is directly collected by the researcher from a source such as observations, surveys, questionnaires, case studies and interviews according to his requirements. As opposed to secondary data which is easily accessible but are not pure as they have undergone through many statistical treatments. Sources of secondary data are government publications, websites, books, journal articles, internal records
The Use of Sources in Teaching and Learning History
Council of Europe, 2005
Reports of the Workshops and Workshop Materials on: “The use of sources in teaching and learning history” Nicosia, Cyprus 13 – 14 November 2005 & “The use of historical sources in teaching cultural and social history of Cyprus” Nicosia, Cyprus 9 – 10 June 2006
Reading Beyond the Book with Primary Sources
The Reading Teacher, 2022
The well-documented decrease in science and social studies instructional time (Blank, 2013; Heafner & Fitchett, 2012) may result in a lack of student under- standing of the context that surrounds nonfiction topics. Alongside the illustrations and endpapers that surround the main text of a picturebook, also known as the peritext (McNair et al., 2021; Witte et al., 2019), primary sources can add further depth and firmly establish the real, lived experiences of people and the sociohistorical and geopo- litical contexts in which they occurred. Primary sources can also spark ideas about contemporary connections and implications.
References: Primary Sources
The Anthropology of Johannes Scottus Eriugena, 1991
Are you being served? Historians and the search for primary sources
Archivaria, 2004
Durant les dernières années, de plus en plus de temps et d'argent ont été consacrés par les institutions d'archives au développement d'instruments de recherche en ligne et d'autres outils électroniques pour repérer l'information. Cependant, ces développements se sont basés sur peu d'études concernant l'efficacité de ces outils ou encore le comportement des utilisateurs dans la recherche d'information. Cet article présente les résultats d'un sondage auprès d'historiens universitaires du Royaume-Uni quant à leur comportement dans la recherche d'information. L'auteur suggère que, même si les historiens ont différentes méthodes pour retrouver l'information, des modèles et des préférences clairs apparaissent. De plus, il suggère que le facteur prédominant expliquant le comportement des historiens dans la recherche d'information est le type ou le genre de source recherché. Enfin, les répercussions de ces résultats sur le développement des systèmes d'information sont présentées. ABSTRACT In recent years archives have spent increasing amounts of time and money developing on-line finding aids and other electronic retrieval tools. However, there have been relatively few studies of the effectiveness of such tools or of users' information-seeking behaviour on which to base these developments. This paper presents results from a survey of UK academic historians' information-seeking behaviour. It suggests that although historians have varied information retrieval methods, clear patterns and preferences are visible. Moreover, analysis suggests that the predominant factor to explain historians' information-retrieval behaviour is the type, or genre, of source concerned. Lastly, the implications of these results for the development of archival information systems are considered. * The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation provided generous financial assistance for the Primarily History Project. The Humanities Advanced Technology and Information Institute and the Faculty of Arts of the University of Glasgow provided additional funding. I would like to thank Monica Greenan and Rebecca Sharp for their valuable research assistance. Wendy Duff, Michael Moss, Lesley Richmond, and Alistair Tough have all provided valuable comments. Particular thanks must go to Helen Tibbo, who first had the idea for this research, and without whose enthusiasm and good advice none of this would have been possible. 2 Seventy responses were received from a survey of 150 UK archives conducted as part of this research project. The results will form a future paper. 3 Richard J. Cox, "Access in the Digital Information Age and the Archival Mission: the United States," Journal of the Society of Archivists 19, no. 1 (1998), p. 26. 4 The Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) is a national, five-year assessment of departments' research performance in the United Kingdom. The primary measure used in this assessment is the publication output of individual academics. RAE performance determines the distribution of £5 billion of public research funds.
w h a t i s a p r i m a r y s o u r c e ?
Historians generally talk about two kinds of sources, primary sources and secondary sources. "Primary" and "secondary" do not refer to the importance of a given source, either in general or for the purposes of a particular historical investigation. in the most basic terms, primary sources are sources from the time, place, and people under investigation. thus, abbot Guibert of nogent's autobiography, which he wrote himself during his life in the early 1100s (to be utterly clear to the point of silliness), is a fine primary source for Guibert's life and even for the events he reports on and the people he tells us about. we can even consider him a primary source for aspects of the first crusade, even though he did not witness it personally, because the information he gives us come from the time of the first crusade. when his reports are secondhand, however, we must be skeptical of the reliability of his information more than we are of his personal narrative, and other sources, ideally eyewitnesses, should corroborate any such information in his story. (we are skeptical of the reliability of his personal narrative as well, but one person's own biases about his or her own life are easier to assess than the biases of any secondhand information.) this definition of a primary source is idealized, of course. things are not always simple or straightforward. Sometimes we accept certain accounts as primary sources because they are as close to the time period as we can get. our sources for the life of alexander the Great include only a handful of truly primary sources: a brief inscription that mentions him in passing, a handful of coins he issued, and the archaeological remains of his activities, including cities and, in one spectacular case, a coastline that he altered. (He built a causeway out into the mediterranean during his siege of the island city of tyre in 332 Bce. it remained after the siege, silted up, and the island is now a peninsula.) But the major narratives we have of his life and campaigns are roman, they date from several hundred years after alexander's time, and they do not show a particularly good understanding of his time. they refer to and sometimes even incorporate bits and summaries of narratives written during alexander's time. we still accept these roman sources as "primary sources" for alexander's life because they are the closest we can get.
what we've just said about sources for alexander also demonstrates that primary sources need not be written sources. Anything from the time and place we are studying can be a primary source: works of art, archaeological finds, scientific data about the natural world (the natural world being, after all, an aspect of a time and place), and so forth. even written evidence comes in many forms beyond self-conscious narratives. Government documents, fictional writing, daily newspapers, and mundane bits of writing such as grocery lists or restaurant menus-all of these can be primary sources.
Primary can of course still have its ordinary, non-history-specific meaning of "chief" or "main": "the primary source for my paper on abraham lincoln is the movie Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter." Primary here indicates that the film was the main source of information you consulted. However, this would not a primary source in terms of types of historical sources (nor would using primarily that source be a very good idea).
what then is a secondary source, if so many things can count as primary sources? Secondary sources are sources that discuss the topic, the time, place, and people under study, but on the basis of primary sources or of other second-hand accounts. thus, if you were writing a paper about alexander the Great, any biography of him written by a current day historian (indeed, any biography written after the roman accounts that we characterized above as "just about almost primary") would be a secondary source, no matter how useful, informative, or wellwritten a secondary source. and of course, like primary sources, not all secondary sources are created equal. a scholarly biography of alexander might be a good secondary source; a medieval epic poem about alexander consisting mostly of legends or a movie such as oliver Stone's 2004 Alexander? not so much. to introduce a further complication, however: what if your research topic were on "the historical reception of alexander the Great from medieval times to the present", in which you examine what people at different times and places thought Introduction of alexander, whether what they thought were true or not? in that case, both that legendencrusted medieval epic and today's Hollywood dreck would be excellent primary sources. and what if your research topic is something going on today (or close enough to be called "contemporary history"-topics involving people who are still alive)? in that case you gain the possibility of oral interviews, news footage, and so forth, as primary sources. But another historian's synthesis of such information, even though it is from the time of the topic, has already become a secondary source. Journalism, sometimes called "the first draft of history," lies in an interesting gray zone here.
confused? let's sum up. Primary sources are sources whose information about a topic comes, as closely as possible, from the time, place, and participants in the topic. for most purposes, that will work for you. But this definition says nothing about the quality of the information a source offers. to evaluate that, we need to say a few things about how to read and evaluate a primary source.