1. Tools of History: Chapter 1
Section 3

2.  Firsthand information
• Court documents
• Speeches
• Eyewitness accounts
• Letters
• Diaries
• Autobiographies
• Personal interviews

3.  Could possibly be:
• Written
• Oral
• A photo
• A video
• An historic map
• Museum artifacts

4.  Account
provided after the fact by
someone who was not actually
there…usually based on primary sources
• Textbooks
• Encyclopedias
• Biographies
• Articles/blogs written by historians
• Museum interpretations

5.  Is it authentic- is it
truthful? Is it what it
claims to be?
• Is it a primary source?
• Is it actually from the time
period?
• Who is giving the
information? What is
his/her point of view?
• Would that person or
organization have a
particular bias?
• You can get flawed
information if you do not
check your sources!

6.  Do NOT use wikipedia!!! EVER!
 Look for .edu at the end of a web address. It may not
be 100% accurate, but it is probably a worthy
source.
 Check the time frame of what you are studying. Let’s
say you are studying the Civil War. Someone who is
living today can not be an eyewitness to Civil War
history, but he or she may have collected many
primary source documents to tell the story. Some
people are known for their research of certain time
periods. Shelby Foote is a good example of an
expert in researching history.

7.  Watch for bias! Does  “Historyis written by
the writer use wording the victors.”
that shows a • Winston Churchill
particular bias about a
person or event? Would your textbook be
 Differing political, different if it were
social, or economic written by British
authors?
viewpoints may give
different sides of an
event.

8.  Cooking utensils
 Catalogs
 Children’s books
 Almanacs
 Old photos
 Farming utensils
 Office tools
 Even graveyards!

9.  Absolute Chronology  Relative Chronology
• The EXACT time and • When an event occurred
place of an event in relationship to other
events.
• This helps to establish
correlations between
events, cause and effect,
or even lack of a
connection between
events. Think of the book
If You Give a Mouse a
Cookie, and you have the
idea of cause and effect.