A few words of caution about primary sources

While primary sources are the professional historian's bread and butter, they often cause confusion amongst inexperienced researchers, and that is because they can be tricky to handle.

One common misconception about primary sources is that, since they were generated closer to the events, they are necessarily more accurate. That is not true. Primary sources, like all documents generated by humans, are liable to represent information that has been filtered, selected, and that presents issues in a subjective way. Even photographs need to be interpreted and cannot be taken for granted. Unlike secondary sources, that result from painstaking research in various aspects of an issue, primary sources are fragments from history that come to us without their surrounding context. Therefore, it is crucial to use secondary source evidence to make sense of primary sources. When handling primary sources, ask yourself the following:

• What kind of document is it? Primary sources include documents as diverse as official diplomatic documents, newspaper articles, military order papers, diaries, census reports, financial statmements, diaries, letters to friends to name just a few. They can also come in a variety of supports including written documents, artifacts, video productions of diverse types, and audio recordings. Knowing what a document is already helps situate it in history.

• Who created / wrote it? Did that person have a particular stake or agenda in the issue being studied?

• What was the intended audience? One does not express the same things or speak the same way when writing a newspaper article, a letter to a friend, or an entry in a diary.

• When and where was it created? Be careful of documents that bear a name of a place but were not necessarily created there. Time and place of origin are essential in understanding other aspects of the document, especially if diplomatic relations are concerned.

When these basic questions are answered, then there are issues related to content:

• What does it say? And possibly what does it not say / try to hide? Consider, for example, how the documents of the various numbered Treaties with Canada's Indigenous peoples only tell one side of what was actually negotiated.

• What does it imply? Often documents say a lot "between the lines", but one must beware of inventing content that is not there. Here, understanding the context around the creation of a document is crucial. However, consider possible issues such as social / economic discrepancies or gender relations that may be implied in the document.

• To what extent is the document reliable? This is a tricky issue, because this means more than whether the document is authentic (meaning that it really was generated in the place and time and by the people who are mentioned). The question of reliability in fact can only be answered in the context of the historical question(s) you are trying to answer. Essentially, this means, in the context of your research, can you use it to confirm a statement you are making? Or is it possibly of dubious use in proving that point, but possibly illustrating how complicated an issue truly is?

• Are there "complicating factors" in interpreting the document? For example, is this a translation or a transcription of a very old document where the spelling has been standardised to make it easier to understand? Was it the result of complex intercultural relations where it may be interpreted in multiple ways by diverse people? To what extent do these factors influence the reliability or usability of the document for your specific research?

Adapted from: Barbara H. Rosenwein, Reading the Middle Ages: Sources from Europe, Byzantium, and the Islamic World. (Peterborough (ON), Broadview Press, 2006), pp. 1-2.