1. And Research Projects Dealing With Credible Sources

2. Primary Sources: When dealing with historical topics, the primary source is the one written nearest to the event or recorded by a person who was a witness to it. Books, newspapers or magazine articles written at the time would be primary sources, as would oral histories, diaries, letters, business documents, and personal papers. Secondary Sources: These are books, documentaries, lectures, speeches, journal articles in peer-reviewed journals, encyclopedias, almanacs, any number of works that are about that subject or deal with it in some fashion.

3. A copy of a primary source in digital or print format still makes it a primary source. For instance, you wouldn’t have to access the original copy of the Constitution in the National Archives. Any faithful print or digitized copy would still be a primary source. The Annals of America is a set of books arranged by date order that has copies of letters, documents, and other primary sources that deal with American history. We have a set in this library.

4. Not everything in print or on the Internet is a reliable or useful source of information. When trying to evaluate a source, there are several things to consider: Authority: Does the article appear in a “peer reviewed” journal? Scholarly journals have every published article go through a process in which the editor decides whether an article looks promising or not and sends it on to a panel of experts and specialists to let him/her know whether they think it’s worth publishing. It has undergone rigorous academic scrutiny before it’s published. Checking the authority of Internet sources is more difficult. Few are authoritative. Online articles are often self-published. Look for any statement about the editors or author responsible for the site. It could be on the 1 st page or in the “about us” section. Do the editors or does the author have Ph.D. after their name? Is the site sponsored by a reputable organization, such as the American Cancer Society? Does it have an advisory board? Look for an editorial policy. Look at contributors’ credentials.

5. Accuracy and Verifiability. Check to see if a work or site’s sources are available so they can be verified. There should be a Works Cited or a bibliography in the back of the work that cites their sources. Look at the titles to see the breadth of the sources to gauge the author’s knowledge of the subject and to see if some bias is involved. If you find that the sources are mainly popular sources, or if the sources are ideologically slanted, you have to conclude that isn’t an a reliable source. Currency. The date of a publication matters. It could be out-of-date. A quick look at the copyright date will give you a clue. Some of the articles you can get on the databases are older than I would suspect. No so very long ago, the oldest articles that were commonly found on your best known databases didn’t go back much before 1987. Recently, I found a lit article that went back to 1964. In the field of literature, you don’t have the sort of currency issues you have in science and history. Judging currency on the Internet is more of a problem.

6. A periodical is any publication that is published on a regular schedule—daily, weekly, monthly, bi-weekly, bi-monthly, quarterly, semi-annually. It could be a peer-reviewed journal, a newspaper, a magazine, a literary journal, an organizational newsletter or magazine, or a publication that is produced regularly by a museum or historical society.

7. Every year, a periodical stops printing their publication and puts it on the Internet because of cost and dwindling subscriptions. That means they have to make their money on their online editions. Each one has a different way of handling it. The New York Times, for instance, offers regular subscriptions, which can be expensive unless it’s in combination with a print subscription. They have free subscriptions, but they will let you see only 20 articles a month. After that you can only access abstracts. Archival articles are free if they’re part of the public domain—published before 1928. On the other hand The Washington (DC) Post is free and seems open to see full text articles but does charge for the archives, which is run by Pro- Quest. Each one is different, and you’ll have to try them to see what you can get for free.

8. NEWSPAPERNEWSPAPER PRIMARYSOURCEPRIMARYSOURCE

9. The Zimmerman Telegram This is a photo of the original telegram found on the Library of Congress site. It is a primary source.

10. www.loc.govwww.loc.gov Library of Congress site American Memories, Historical Newspapers, Prints and Photographs, and much more. www.archives.govwww.archives.gov The National Archives. Site Photographs, records (military, congressional, etc), historical documents http://cdl.library.edu/moahttp://cdl.library.edu/moa The Making of America at Cornell University American magazines and journals from 1845-1900. www.besthistorywebsites.netwww.besthistorywebsites.net Best History Websites Mainly for teachers but has a lot of links to solid websites. Put together by a history teacher.

11. www.ipl.orgwww.ipl.org – Internet Public Library This is a gold mine of information of all types. Type in your subject in the box on the first page for specific searches. You can use the menu to find specific sources, such as dictionaries, translators, all sorts of stuff. www.holocaust-history.orgwww.holocaust-history.org - Holocaust History Project Lots of essays and some primary sources available on here about the Holocaust. I did a search on Kristallnacht, and they had not only questions and essays but links to a host of sites on the web about the Holocaust www.time.com/timewww.time.com/time - Time Magazine There is an archive that goes back to 1924. Appears to be free for full-text archival articles—even for non-subscribers. www.nytimes.comwww.nytimes.com – New York Times www.washingtonpost.comwww.washingtonpost.com – Washington (DC) Post www.tampabay.comwww.tampabay.com – Tampabay Times (considered one of the top 10 newspapers in the country)

12. www.census.gov/apsd/www/statbrief Statistical Briefs of the Census http://stats.bls.govhttp://stats.bls.gov – US Bureau of Labor Stats http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.govhttp://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov Bureau of Justice Stats www.fedstats.govwww.fedstats.gov – US Federal Stats http://adage.com/section/american- demographics/195 Advertising is dependent upon demographics. An example of some stats they have is on the next slide ⇒

13. Stats On the Web Ad Age Bureau of Labor Statistics in 2010 dollars

14. Secondary sources include encyclopedias, almanacs, Statistical Abstracts, books on the subject. Essays and articles about the subject. We have a lot of books in the library that have primary sources within their covers. Two places to look, if working on an historical topic is in the 900 section, which is history & geography, and in the 300 section, which includes social issues, such as climate change, gun control, slavery, immigration, labor movements, and more.

15. Good Luck!