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What is Primary Source? Primary sources are original records created at the time historical events occurred or well after events in the form of memoirs and oral histories. Primary sources may include letters, manuscripts, diaries, journals, newspapers, speeches, interviews, memoirs, documents produced by government agencies such as Congress or the Office of the President, photographs, audio recordings, moving pictures or video recordings, research data, and objects or artifacts such as works of art or ancient roads, buildings, tools, and weapons. These sources serve as the raw material to interpret the past, and when they are used along with previous interpretations by historians, they provide the resources necessary for historical research.
Is it reliable? Before relying on the information provided by a website, examine and understand the purpose of the website. While the purpose might not affect the accuracy of the primary source material it contains, it might indicate that the material has been altered or manipulated in some way to change or influence its meaning. Sometimes sites use primary source material to persuade the reader to a particular point of view, distorting the contents in obvious or subtle ways. Also, sites can use primary source material haphazardly, without appropriately choosing, inspecting, or citing the work.
In general, look for websites with a non-biased, balanced approach to presenting sources. Websites produced by educational or governmental institution often are more reliable than personal websites, but government sites may be subject to propaganda.
Questions to Ask:
Author? In a website of primary sources it is important to determine where the author got the documents. The best sites clearly state the source of the original material.
Format? Different factors need to be considered based on the format of the document and type of site:
Scanned image of a document? The image of scanned documents usually illustrates what the original documents look like. The origin of the documents at a website may be determined by the creator of the website. For example, the Library of Congress website generally supplies documents from its own manuscript collections, but providing in-house documents is not always possible.Sometimes, websites will present texts from other document collections, or may provide links to documents at other websites.
Transcribed document? Transcribed documents do not illustrate the original image of the document but only provide the content in plain text format. It is important to discover the original source of transcribed documents to determine if the transcription is complete and accurate. The source, which may be the original documents or published editions, should be cited.
Links to external documents? Metasites that link to external documents and web sites that use frames require you to track down the original website for the documents for evaluation purposes. A reliable website may link to a document in another not so reliable site and vice-versa.
Reviewed? Check to see if the web site is reviewed
Look up the web site in reputable history subject directories .
Find out what other webpages link to the web site. How many links are there? What kinds of sites are they?
Design? Design not only makes an electronic resource easier to use, it is also one indication that the content has been provided, and is being maintained, by a trustworthy source. Although standards of what constitutes "good web design" vary widely, clarity, simplicity and easily-understandable navigational cues are some of the obvious signs. Some considerations are: Pages that are legible with clear explanations.
Obvious navigational aid that provide access to documents and obvious links on every webpage to the homepage.
Individual urls for each document for ease of linking and citation information.
Clear instructions about special software requirements.
Do they charge a fee? Fee-based sites must be weighed against their value. It is possible that the same content, or similar content, is available through another electronic source free of charge. Public, school, and academic libraries may offer free access to fee based electronic collections of primary resources.
Washington State University