Estimated time to complete this section: 4 hours
Now that you’ve identified secondary sources, how do you determine their credibility and usefulness?
Each secondary source should be evaluated according to the following criteria:
- What is the author’s narrative?
- What primary sources are used as evidence to support the author’s narrative?
- To what extent do the primary sources support the author’s account?
- Does the author consider other historians’ interpretations of what happened and why?
- How does the source compare to other secondary sources on this subject?
- How credible is the author?
Even after you’ve evaluated a secondary source, it may be useful to consider how other experts have responded to the work. There are a number of online networks of historians within a specific subject or region that can offer nuanced insight on secondary literature. Often, these communities create free online reviews of new texts while also discussing and evaluating established historical interpretation.
An easy way to locate these networks is to browse or join H-Net. H-Net is a collaborative network of scholars, organized into a number of subject-specific groups on a wide variety of topics. You can find these networks here: https://networks.h-net.org/networks. There are networks for individual states and geographical regions, like H-Ohio, H-New Mexico, or H-West. If you are interested in following the conversation of a particular network, this helpful guide describes how to set up an account, subscribe to a network, and start a thread. To locate useful reviews, you can browse and subscribe to a network pertaining to that subject, like H-Appalachia, H-Afro-Am, H-Eugenics, or you can peruse the reviews across all the networks here. http://www.h-net.org/reviews/home.php. If you would like to locate a review on a specific book, search the title or author here on the review search page)
A number of historical online communities have developed specialized online spaces for a discussion of certain fields or eras.*
- The Junto – a blog for early Americanists. Includes reviews of new works, round-table discussions by scholars, interviews with scholars, and additional resources like podcasts and historiographical posts.
- Common-Place – explores content related to early American history. Includes features, reviews, and columns by scholars. Published as issues seven times per year.
- Nursing Clio – a blog project that focuses on gender and medicine. Includes reviews of historical and popular culture.
- Notches – a blog that explores the history of sexuality. Peer-reviewed, includes posts on the interpretation of primary sources, highlights new scholarship with author interviews, accepts reviews and summaries from conferences, workshops, and exhibits.
- Perspectives on History – an online resource from the American Historical Association that provides current and up-to-date discussions on events and activities within the field. Features announcements, current events, highlights organization members, current historical research, and posts on the teaching and methods of history.
- History@Work – the blog of the National Council on Public History, shares news and content on the field. Includes announcements, conference and exhibition reviews, and interviews.
- Process – the blog of the Organization of American Historians shares news and content on U.S. History. Subjects include methodology, teaching, and writing history.
- Black Perspectives – the blog of the African American Intellectual History Society sharing news and content on African American and African diasporic thought, history, and culture. Includes interviews with authors, roundtable discussions, current events, and book reviews.
- Religion in American History – a blog that explores religion in American culture and history. Includes announcements, roundtable discussions, book reviews, author interviews, and conference reviews.
- US Intellectual History – the blog for the Society for U.S. Intellectual History that shares news, book reviews, pedagogical discussions, and guest posts from historians.
- Age of Revolutions – a blog that explores the global history of revolutions. The blog includes curated bibliographies and posts by guests and editors on the concept of revolution or the revolutionary experience.
- Ben Franklin’s World – a weekly podcast about Early American History. Episodes include interviews with guest historians and explore hypothetical questions about historical events.
- Backstory – a weekly podcast that explores themes and events in US History. Episodes feature interviews with historians and discussion of audience questions.
*The resources provided here are good places to start, but we recognize they are national networks.
Activity 4.3: Create an annotated bibliography
Assess the secondary sources related to your local history project in the bibliography you created in Activity 4.2. For each of your 5-10 sources create an annotation that:
- Briefly summarizes the information that answers your context questions
- Assesses the text using the questions explored in this section:
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- What is the author’s narrative?
- What primary sources are used as evidence to support the author’s narrative?
- To what extent do the primary sources support the author’s account?
- Does the author consider other historians’ interpretations of what happened and why?
- How does the source compare to other secondary sources on this subject?
- How credible is the author? How have other historians reviewed or responded to this source (consult one of the networks mentioned in this activity)?
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