{"id":1695,"date":"2015-11-05T17:57:51","date_gmt":"2015-11-05T17:57:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-404pinsker\/?p=1695"},"modified":"2015-11-05T17:58:17","modified_gmt":"2015-11-05T17:58:17","slug":"evaluating-sources","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-404pinsker\/2015\/11\/05\/evaluating-sources\/","title":{"rendered":"Evaluating sources"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Why are some sources better than others? \u00a0There are many ways to answer this question, but for the historian, it begins with an understanding of the research playing field. \u00a0Aspiring historians learn to distinguish primary and secondary sources along a kind of baseball diamond.<a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-404pinsker\/files\/2015\/11\/Screen-Shot-2015-11-05-at-12.46.56-PM.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-1696\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-404pinsker\/files\/2015\/11\/Screen-Shot-2015-11-05-at-12.46.56-PM-1024x762.png\" alt=\"Research Field\" width=\"940\" height=\"699\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-404pinsker\/files\/2015\/11\/Screen-Shot-2015-11-05-at-12.46.56-PM-1024x762.png 1024w, https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-404pinsker\/files\/2015\/11\/Screen-Shot-2015-11-05-at-12.46.56-PM-300x223.png 300w, https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-404pinsker\/files\/2015\/11\/Screen-Shot-2015-11-05-at-12.46.56-PM-403x300.png 403w, https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-404pinsker\/files\/2015\/11\/Screen-Shot-2015-11-05-at-12.46.56-PM.png 1768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 940px) 100vw, 940px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>This field illustrates a key insight. \u00a0Primary sources are almost always most reliable the closer they are to the point of creation, but secondary sources tend to become more useful the further they are away from events. \u00a0In both cases, it is a question of distance. \u00a0Proximity correlates with truth in first-hand evidence, but the passage of time helps encourage broader perspective in the development of secondary sources.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Why are some sources better than others? \u00a0There are many ways to answer this question, but for the historian, it begins with an understanding of the research playing field. \u00a0Aspiring historians learn to distinguish primary and secondary sources along a &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-404pinsker\/2015\/11\/05\/evaluating-sources\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":373,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[22265],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-methods"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-404pinsker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1695","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-404pinsker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-404pinsker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-404pinsker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/373"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-404pinsker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1695"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-404pinsker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1695\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-404pinsker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-404pinsker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-404pinsker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}