Primary sources give insight into past events, but no primary source is a perfect representation. All sources are written from a specific perspective with certain aims in mind that affect what gets included (and what gets omitted) from an account. In this sense, even the driest "informational" sources have a bias: a ship's log might give excellent information on how fast the wind was blowing and how currents were moving in a voyage, but might offer little information about the social dynamics among the crew. As historians, our job is to recognize both the strengths and limits of a source and to incorporate both of them into our analysis.
Use information in the database or the library catalog, as well as any editor's notes or other scholarly works, to learn about how a specific source was created.
To think about the perspective of a primary source, start with the following questions:
•What kind of source is it? What genre does it belong to?
•Who created the source?
•Does the source have a title? What is it?
•Where was the source created?
•What audience was supposed to engage with the source? How were they supposed to engage with it? (For example, is it a book that readers would have had to purchase or an advertisement?)
•Why was the source created? What was the goal of the author?
•Did the source succeed in the author's goal?
•How did the source survive from the time that it was created to today? (The history of the movement and ownership of a document or artwork is known as its provenance.)
Once you have collected information about the perspective and purpose of a source, you should move on to engaging with the text itself. Again, looking at the content of a source is not just figuring out what it says. Researchers should also pay attention to how an author says it. Rhetoric, style, and even questions like font choice can be significant. (Think about how you treat an announcement in Times New Roman versus one in Comic Sans.)
Scholars sometimes talk about analyzing sources "along" or "against" the grain. Analyzing materials along the grain involves paying careful attention to the original purpose and expectations of the author. (For instance, reading a presidential inaugural address to learn about how political elites thought about the United States at a given point in history would be an "along the grain" reading.) Analyzing material against involves using a source to explore a question that the author might never have considered. (For instance, historians might use references to a First Lady in that same inaugural speech as a way to understand the role of women in elite American politics, even though that was not the subject of the speech.)
To analyze the content of a primary source, consider the following questions:
•What historical events or processes are discussed in the source?
•What is the author's tone? What emotions or reactions is the author working to evoke in the reader/viewer?
•What was the author's position relative to the events and processes described? Is this someone who was present at a battle and describing it afterwards? Is it a journalist describing an event from others' reports?
•How does the author's perspective compare to that of their audience? Was the author writing for a group of people that shared their perspective, or was the author addressing external groups?
•What is the stated purpose of the text?
•What alternate perspectives might exist that could challenge or complement the author's view? Where can we look to find those sources?