A. Classifications of Historical Sources

Historical Research

A. Definition and Areas of History

What is the first thing that comes in to your mind when you hear the word history?

The word history originally means the search for knowledge and truth.

B. Views on the Value of Historical Research

Historical investigations help broaden our experiences and make us more understanding and appreciative of our human nature and uniqueness.

By knowing our past, we know the present condition better.

C. Historical Research as a Modern Undertaking

Most of those who engaged in historical writing intended for the most part to entertain or to inspire their readers. (Van Dalen, 1972).

He considered history as somewhat aiming for truth. (Thucydides)

D. Characteristics of Contemporary Historical Researches

Present historical investigations primarily aim for critical search for truth.

In making your historical report the actual events and the conditions of the time are not violated, exaggerated, or distorted. The critical material used by historians maybe useful in providing you the guidelines in your historical study.

You may use them to assist you to judge objectively the conditions which led to their results of the studies undertaken previously.

E. Methods of Historical Research

Formulating your problem

There are several motivations for undertaking a historical research.

● One of these is your doubt about some event, development or experience in the past.

● Another reason for a historical study may be your discovery of new source materials the meaning of which will supply answers about past events when you make your interpretations.

● Another source of your problem maybe a question regarding an old interpretation of an existing data; you may want to evolve a new hypothesis which will offer a more satisfactory explanation of past events.

You may have to take your time to look one by one at the important motives or reasons which caused you to doubt or to get interested about certain gaps in knowledge in relation to past event or experience. From here you may now draw a simple,clear,and a fairly complete description of your problem.

Gathering your source materials

One of your important initial tasks as a historical researcher is the gathering of the best available data to solve your problem.

It is useful to look out for the many varied evidences of the activities engaged in by people who lived in the past.

It is necessary at this point to be familiar to the different types of historical sources which you may avail of as you conduct your data collection.

a. Classifications of Historical Sources

Historical sources maybe classified as primary or secondary (Fox,1969)

Primary source is regarded as the source of the “best evidence”. This is because the data come from the testimony of able eye and ear witnesses to past events. They may also consist of actual objects in the past which you can directly scrutinize or examine.

Secondary sources, on the other hand are information supply who was not a direct observer or participant of the event; object, or condition

Another classification of historical sources is based on whether the recording of the data was deliberate or inadvertent.

Deliberate sources provide data which have been recorded with the conscious effort to preserve information (Fox,1969)

Inadvertent sources supply information also for your historical study even though that was not the original intention of the source.

Good and Scates (1972) give two broad divisions which classify existing historical sources. These are:

(1) reports of events called documents, which are composed of impressions made on some human brain by past events: these impressions have been consciously recorded with the aim of transmitting information.

(2) Physical objects or written materials of historical value: these are called remains or relics and are produced without deliberately aiming to impart information.

Van Dalen (1979) enumerates the types of historical records which may be available in written, pictorial, and mechanical forms. These include official records, personal records, oral traditions, pictorial records like photographs, paintings, sculpture, movies, microfilm, slides, and coins; published materials like news papers, journals, pamphlets, literary and philosophical works and periodicals; mechanical records like tape recordings of interviews and conferences, phonograph records of speeches and reading activities; remains, which include physical remains, printed materials, and hand written materials.

You now choose the evidence which is relevant to your problem.

Дата добавления: 2015-10-29