Module No.
and Module 1: Meaning and Relevance of History
Title
Lesson No. and Title Lesson 2: Sources of History
Learning Outcomes At the end of the lesson, the students must be able to:
Understand the different sources
Identify the different criticism
Evaluate the sources for their credibility, authenticity and
provenance
Time Frame
Introduction Welcome to Lesson 2 of Module 1! In this topic you are
scholarly focused on the different distinction of sources and
you will introduce to the criticism. Keep on Learning!
Activity Direction: Sort the historical sources inside the 1 st box and
tell whether it is primary source or secondary source then
place your answer in the 2nd box.
(1st box)
Catalog Newspaper archival materials
Magazine clothes business ledgers
Parish records Paintings Manunggul Jar
Diaries Monographs Colonial Churches
(2nd box)
Primary Sources Secondary Sources
1. How do you find the activity above?
Analysis 2. What are your strategies or techniques to classify the
words according to its origin?
3. How do you come up with that answer?
Definition and types of primary, secondary, and tertiary sources
Abstraction 1. Primary sources – give first-hand, original, and unfiltered
information.
Example: image, document, map, eyewitness accounts, personal
journals, interviews,
surveys, experiments, historical documents, and artifacts.
Types:
a. Autobiographies and memoirs
1. Autobiography – account of a person’s life written by
that person (Encyclopedia Britannica)
2. Memoir – history or record composed from personal
observation and experience (Encyclopedia Britannica)
b. Diaries, personal letters, and correspondence
1. Diary – a form of autobiographical writing that is
regularly kept record of the diarist’s activities and
reflections (Encyclopedia Britannica)
2. Personal letter – a type of informal letter composition
that usually concerns personal matters and is sent from
one individual to another (Nordquist, 2013)
3. Correspondence – body of letters or communications
c. Interviews, surveys, and fieldwork
1. Interview – a conversation where questions are asked
and answers are given
2. Survey – list of questions aimed at extracting specific
data from a particular group of people
3. Fieldwork or field research – collection of information
outside a laboratory, library or workplace setting
d. Photographs and posters
Photographs and posters – illustrate past events as they
happened and people as they were at a particular time
e. Works of art and literature
1. Painting – form of visual art where paint or ink is used
on a canvass or, more often in the past, wooden panels
or plaster walls, to depict an artist’s rendering of a
scene or even of an abstract, non-representational
image
2. Drawing – form of visual art in which a person uses
various drawing instruments (pen and ink, crayons,
chalk, charcoal) to mark paper or another two-
dimensional medium
3. Literature – body of written works. It has been applied
to those imaginative works of poetry and prose
distinguished by the intentions of their authors and the
perceived aesthetic excellence of their execution
f. Speeches and oral histories
Speech – a form of communication in spoken language,
made by a speaker before an audience for a given purpose.
2. Secondary sources – refers to the means through which a primary
source is presented, or information that is filtered through someone
else’s perspective and may be biased.
Example: An article describing an original document as it is written
to present or include
information about the primary source.
Types:
a. Bibliographies
Annotated bibliography – an organized list of sources,
eachof which is followed by a brief note or “annotation”
(University of Wisconsin System, 2018)
b. Biographical works
Biography – description of a real person’s life, including
factual details as well as stories from the person’s life
c. Periodicals
Periodicals – newspapers, magazines, and scholarly
journals – all of which are published “periodical”
d. Literature reviews and review articles
1. Literature review – an evaluative report of information
found in the literature related to your selected area of
study
2. Review article – summarizes the current state of
understanding on a topic. It
surveys and summarizes previously published studies,
rather than reporting new
facts or analysis
3. Tertiary sources – provide third-hand information by reporting
ideas and details from secondary sources.
Types:
a. General references – dictionary, encyclopedia, almanac,
and atlas
b. Crowd sources – YouTube, message boards, and social
media sites (Facebook and Twitter)
c. Search sites
Distinction of primary and secondary sources
Primary Sources Secondary Sources
created at the time of an created after event; sometimes
event, or very soon after a long time after something
created by someone who saw happened
or heard an event themselves often uses primary sources as
often one-of-a-kind, or rare examples
letters, diaries, photos and expresses an opinion or an
newspapers (can all be argument about a past event
primary sources) history text books, historical
movies, and biographies (can
all be secondary sources)
Repositories of Primary Sources
1. Library – collection of sources and information and similar
resources, made accessible to a defined community for reference or
borrowing
2. Archive – contains primary source documents that have
accumulated over the course of an individual or organization’s
lifetime and are kept to show the function of that person or
organization
3. Museum – an institution that cares/preserves a collection of
artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or
scientific importance.
4. Historical/preservation society – an organization dedicated to
preserving, collecting, researching, and interpreting historical
information or items
5. Special collections – are library units that house materials (rare
books, manuscripts, photographs, archives, ephemera, digital
records) requiring specialized security and user services
Distinction of external and internal criticism
1. External criticism
refers to the geniuses of the documents a researcher uses in
a historical study
asks if the evidence under consideration is authentic
the researcher checks the validity of the source (Is it what it
appears to be? Is it admissible as evidence?)
2. Internal criticism
refers to the accuracy of the contents of a document
has to do with what the document says
3. General Principles for Determining Reliability
1. Human sources may be relics such as a fingerprint,
or narratives such as a statement or a letter. Relics are
more credible sources than narratives.
2. Any given source may be forged or corrupted.
Strong indication of originality of the source
increases its reliability.
3. The closer a sources is to the event which it
purports to describe, the more one can trust it to give
an accurate historical description of what actually
happened.
4. An eyewitness is more reliable than testimony at
second hand, which is more reliable than hearsay at
further remove, and so on.
5. If a number of independent sources contain the
message, the credibility of the message is strongly
increased.
6. The tendency of a source is its motivation for
providing some kind of bias. Tendencies should be
minimized or supplemented with opposite
motivations.
7. If it can be demonstrated that the witness or source
has no direct interest in creating bias then the
credibility of the message is increased.
Direction: Answer the question below. Write your answer to
the space provided.
Application ___1. Refers to the genuineness of the documents a
researcher uses in a historical study.
___2. Refers to the accuracy of the contents of the
documents.
___3. An institution that cares for (conserves) a collection of
artifacts and other object of artistic, cultural, historical, or
scientific importance
___4. A historical account or biography written from
personal knowledge or special sources.
___5. A self- written account of the life oneself
___6. An index or textual consolidation of primary and
secondary sources
__7. A document or recording that relates or discusses
information originally presented elsewhere
__8. Information about events recorded at the time of those
events
__9. A collection of important records about a place or an
organization
__10. A personal record of experiences kept on a regular
basis.
TEST II: ESSAY
1. List four categories of sources that historical researchers
use and give examples for each.
2. What criteria do historical researchers use to validate their
sources of data?
Congratulations! You’ve made it through! You just finished
Closure Module 1.
