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Using the Web to Study History
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What are historical sources? Many of the sources linked
to the History 10 Web Site 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. |
| 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 ought to be able to judge the intentions and
the truthfulness of what we find on the web. To learn more about how to
judge the value of web sites, read this Web
Site Tutorial compiled by librarians at the University of Maryland. |
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Pictures are sources too. The Web contains millions
of visual images. Many of them (like the two pictures below) 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. 
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