Some historical questions can never be answered because of a lack of primary sources. Some historical questions, on the other hand, enjoy a wealth of relevant primary sources. In many instances, especially for beginning researchers, the amount of primary sources can be overwhelming. These sources may include letters, diaries, government reports, memoranda, brochures, physical objects, pay stubs, and sticky notes.
The successful researcher must prioritize sources in order to find a starting point. Archives and libraries often provide an index (often called a “finding aid”) of their holdings. Sometimes these finding aids are very short and include nothing more than the name of a box of documents. Other finding aids are extensive and provide detailed descriptions of each document. In a later theme, you will search for finding aids relevant to a research topic of your choice. Here you will access a pre-selected finding aid and create a plan for tackling the extensive list of sources.
If you have a detailed list of sources, it should be fairly easy to prioritize sources. Newspaper articles and government reports usually provide fairly comprehensive discussions of a topic and will usually serve as good places to start. An individual person will have a fairly limited understanding of a large, contemporaneous topic, and primary sources written from one person’s perspective will reflect that. Once you understand the big picture and the basic narrative of a topic, you can begin to look at primary sources that present a much smaller view of the topic, like letters or diaries. Many finding aids only provide authors, recipients, and dates for personal writing; they often omit any description of content. There is no alternative but to read through all of those documents individually.
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