Arts and Humanities Commons^™

The Current State Of Primary Historical Soures Online, Richard Hacken

BYU Studies Quarterly

As a vital first step in substantiating and documenting historical details, there can be no substitute for a primary source derived from as close and contemporaneous an observation of a given event as possible. A historian unable to consult authoritative and honest voices from the past can verify little but is left to tinker with tradition and supposition. Until quite recently, the main mode of examining a primary source has been one on one—one scholar face-to-face with one original document in one physical space. Historiography has been slowed by travel expenses, time constraints, vagaries in obtaining permission, and other logistical …