Basics:
What type of source is it? (newspaper article, map, letter, film, etc.) When was it created?
Where was it created?
Who created it?
Authorship:
What do you know about the author’s background?
What is the author’s place in society? (status, occupation, class, gender, ethnicity, etc.)
How might the author’s place in society shape the author’s perspective in this source?
Does the author have an argument? If so, what is it?
What motives did she/he have in creating
the document?
Audience:
Who is the intended audience for this source?
Did the author address any particular person or group?
Was the author speaking for (or representing) a particular audience?
Did the author’s audience have any effect on the document’s content?
How was the document received by the audience?
Historical Content:
What does this source tell you about the
time and place in which it was created?
How useful is it for understanding the
past?
Reliability:
What biases or other cultural factors might have shaped the message of this source?
Was the author in a position to have reliable knowledge of the event?
Reliability (continued)
Does the author have any reason to avoid telling the truth as she/he witnessed the event?
What historical perspectives are left out of this source?
Does it exclude, downplay, or ignore
evidence or issues that you can verify
through other sources?
Was the author trying to silence another
audience?
What questions are left unanswered by this source?
How trustworthy is the source?
Authenticity:
Are there reasons to doubt the authorship of the document?
Was the document possibly a forgery?
Has the document been altered in any way? If it is a transcription of someone else’s words, who was the scribe?
What role might the scribe have played in
shaping the document’s tone or content?
Influence:
How important or influential was the source in its own day and age?
By what standards can one measure a document’s significance?
Was it widely disseminated and read (e.g., a pamphlet)?
Did the document’s publication have anticipated and unanticipated consequences?
Relationship to Course Themes:
How does the document relate to the course’s readings and/or lectures? Provide specific examples.
