USEFULNESSAND RELIABILITY
To effectively use sources, historians
need to determine if they are reliable.
Questions might include:
Is the source biased? Bias might refer to race,
gender, class or political or cultural factors.
Does the source contain facts or opinions?
How reliable is the source for the particular
subject being studied
Biased sources generally give a one-sided
account of an event, but they can still be
useful for demonstrating a particular
perspective.Types of bias include:
Deliberate manipulation of the truth
Lack of supportive evidence
Distortion to serve a particular purpose
Beliefs or opinions of the writer
Some signs of bias might include:
Emotive words or phrases
Omitted facts
Lack of balance in descriptions
All sources provide some form of
information, but not all of it will be
relevant or useful to every topic.
Sources are often incomplete and provide
only fragmented glimpses of the past.
A useful acronym for determining a
source's usefulness is...
PLACT
Purpose: Why was it
written/drawn/ created?
Limitation: What isn't the source
telling you? What is imperfect about
the source?
Author: Who wrote it and why
would you listen to them?
Content: What does it tell you?
Type of source: Is it primary or
secondary? What format does it
take?