Trump2016history through sources: a reference guide

An independent guide to working with historical sources. It has no connection with the former website on this domain, with politicians, parties or public authorities, and it is not political advocacy material.

Ideas

Key ideas

Working with the past has its own vocabulary. Words like "provenance" or "attribution" sound dry, but each stands for a simple question to put to a document: who made you, when, where have you been, and can you be trusted? Here those terms are collected with short explanations.

A term is not there to sound impressive. It reminds you to ask the document an important question.

— Editor's note

How we chose the material: the glossary covers terms without which it is hard to understand the work of historians and archivists. The definitions are descriptive and deliberately simplified for readers without specialist training.

Sources and testimony

Historical source
Any trace of the past from which we can learn something about it: a document, an object, an image, a recorded account, a building.
Primary source
A source created at the time of an event or soon afterwards, usually by a participant or eyewitness. It is contrasted with later retellings and studies.
Testimony
An account of an event that comes from a particular person. Its value depends on what the witness could have seen for themselves and how far they had a stake in one version or another.
Retelling
Someone else's information put into your own words. With each retelling details are lost or added, so it is worth tracing the chain back to its start.

Checking a document

Attribution
Establishing the author, place of creation or ownership of a document or object. It relies on handwriting, style, materials, signatures and comparison with securely identified examples.
Dating
Working out when something was made. Dating can be exact, if a date is given and confirmed, or approximate, when it is inferred from paper, spelling, manufacturing technique or the events mentioned.
Provenance
The life story of an object or document: who kept it, how it passed from hand to hand and how it reached its present home. Gaps in that story are a reason for caution.
Source criticism
Testing a document with questions: who wrote it, when and why, and for whom was the text intended? External criticism assesses authenticity; internal criticism assesses the reliability of the content.

Context and custody

Context
The circumstances in which a source arose: customs, language, everyday life, other documents of the same time. Without context it is easy to read an old text through modern eyes and get it wrong.
Archival fonds
The body of documents created in the course of the work of one institution, family or person and kept together. This principle helps preserve the links between the papers.
Original and copy
An original is created by the author or their office; a copy reproduces it later. A copy can be very valuable, but errors and omissions can creep in when it is made.
  • Sources

    Types of sources, their strengths and weaknesses, and how to cite them.

  • Analysis

    Worked examples with a letter, a diary, a photograph and an old newspaper, plus our article catalogue.

  • History

    How attitudes to evidence about the past changed, from ancient authors to the archival scholarship of the 19th century.

  • FAQ

    Short answers about this guide, archives, documents and family photographs.

Sources

  • Encyclopaedic sources on historiography and the history of photography
  • Russian Federal Law No. 125-FZ "On Archival Affairs in the Russian Federation"

Specific dates and facts in this guide come from encyclopaedic works and official programme descriptions; everything else is described in general terms. Dates for old documents are almost always approximate, and we try to state plainly how certain we are.