Evaluating Primary Sources

From PhillipsWiki

To evaluate primary sources ask yourself the basic questions

Who? Who is the person or group writing this document? Do they belong to a special interest group?

What? What is the motive or purpose of the source? Is there a bias or agenda?

Where? Where was the document written? ie. on the site of an event or removed from it

Why? Why was the document created? ie. to record events, advance an agenda, document an act of government

When? When was the document written? ie. at the time of the event or later?

Remember that many primary source documents are recorded and filtered through the lenses of

Age
Nationality
Race and ethnicity
Religious and political beliefs
Sex
Social and economic position

 It is important to determine the biography, historical background, and/or social climate that  
 gave rise to your particular documents.

Also remember that a primary source document always has a situation and context in which it exists as a primary source. This means that Alexander Falconbridge’s An Account of the Slave Trade on the Coast of Africa written in 1788 is an excellent primary source account for a paper on the slave trade between Africa and the New World, but it is not a great primary source for a paper on slavery in the South in the 1860’s.