Bias

Practically everyone is biased in some way. Bias basically means having an unfair or unbalanced option about something or someone. Because history is a subject where people express opinions, it means we have to be very careful to watch out for, and understand, bias. It's normal for a source to have a bias, it's your job as a scholar to identify that bias.

Historical Context

Historical context is everything that affects an era, including the political, social, cultural, and intellectual environment that surrounds any historical actor or action. It is the “big picture,” in which your topic occurred.

Primary Source

A primary source is a piece of information about a historical event or period in which the creator of the source was an actual participant in or a contemporary of a historical moment. The purpose of primary sources is to capture the words, the thoughts, and the intentions of the past. Primary sources help interpret what happened and why it happened. Examples can include: documents, artifacts, historic sites, speeches, songs, letters, journals, or other written and tangible items created during the historical period being researched. (READ MORE HERE)

Secondary Source

A secondary source is usually a published book or article by an author who was not an eyewitness or participant but is basing their interpretation of history on primary sources, research and study. Things like textbooks, biographies, newspapers, history books are secondary sources. Secondary sources provide useful background information and the best ones feature bibliographies that include primary sources used by the author(s) in their own research (you can find these too!). (READ MORE HERE)

Reliable

A source is reliable if it has been published by an individual who is a respected expert or an organization that is widely respected as doing quality research. All the databases in the Big Lake Media Center databases are reliable. The Mega Links on this website are all to reliable sources. Still not sure? Give that source the CRAAP Test! (click the link)

Significance

Something is significant if it's important to you or to a group of people. If something is meaningful or eventful, then it's significant. This can be something big like a war or something small like an individual person's life. How do we show significance? By showing that something made an impact. When asking if something is historically significant, it's usually good to think about, "Why should people care about this today?" It's the "So What" of your topic.