Using the Web to Study History

What are historical sources? Many of the sources linked to the History 10 Web Site Topic Pages are "primary sources," the most important kind of source for learning history. Thousands of primary sources, unavailable to us anywhere else, are "a click away" on the web. To help you to think about the written documents in this web site and in your course reader, Documenting the Modern World, read this lesson on the Analysis of Primary Sources.

Pictures are sources too. The Web contains millions of visual images. Many of them  can help us to learn the history we are studying. To introduce yourself to using visual sources to study history, read Looking at Visual Sources.

How do you know a good web site from a bad one? As you use the Web more frequently and discover different web sites, this question becomes more and more important. Anyone can write a web site and publish it for the whole world to see. There is no authority or expert who can decide what gets put on line. This is very different than a college library, where books have been selected by people who are qualified to judge their value. Just as we should question any other source we use in historical study, we should judge the intentions, accuracy, and the truthfulness of what we find on the web. When you use a website, think about who is choosing and writing the content and what their goals, limitations, and potential biases might be.