Source criticism, which represents a first analytic step in your engagement with a source, is an attempt to acquire the relevant background knowledge which you will ultimately need to assess a source’s validity and its significance for your own research question. The key questions to consider here are: “Under which circumstances and with which intentions was the source created? Which information might it or might it not convey? Which leanings and biases is it likely to betray?” Only once these aspects have been considered can a source be made to “speak for itself”.

Methods of source criticism are outlined in numerous introductory guides for history students, where they are occasionally also illustrated in diagram form. In this section, the recommended approach to source criticism is introduced via a series of example questions on various topics. Source criticism, of course, does not involve working your way through every question on this list one by one. Some questions may already be answered in the introduction, annotations or footnotes of a published source or source edition, while others may not be relevant to every source or research question. For example, the name of the clerk who transcribed a legal document is usually of limited historical significance, but contextual knowledge about the author of a diary is always imperative for its interpretation.

Source History

• Archival History: How has the source been handed down over time: as an original or as a transcription? Was it altered in any way in the process? In which archive(s) and collection(s) has it been held?
• Authenticity: Is the source genuine? A falsification is not without value; it can provide clues as to when and why the original was forged.  

Source Context and Content Description

• Text Type: What type of text is it (official document, letter, chronicle, legal document, etc.)? Which function did or does it fulfil?
• External Characteristics: Out of which material is it made? Which format does it follow? Is it handwritten or printed?
• Authorship: Who wrote the source? What do we know about this (or these) person(s)? In which capacity did the author compose it? Was he/she an eyewitness or a contemporary witness? Remember to distinguish between the author’s “horizon” (what could he/she have known?) and his/her “standpoint” (what did he/she want to report?).
• Time and Place of Creation: When, where and under which circumstances was the source written? Undated sources can be roughly dated by formal criteria (e.g. handwriting, paper) and/or substantive criteria (e.g. references to historical events, etc.).
• Context: What role did the historical (social, political, economic) context in which the source was written play in its creation?
• Objectives and Intentions: Which practical objectives and intentions underlie the source? Which personal interests permeate it?
• Target Audience: To whom is the text addressed? What is known about this readership?
• Reception (cf. Source History): What do we know about the source’s reception, impact, dissemination and treatment over time?

Language and Content

• Linguistic Features: Do you understand the source’s content and language? If not, consult contemporary and/or specialist encyclopaedias and dictionaries.
• Which persons, institutions and circumstances are mentioned in the source? What is known about them? Biographical literature is especially useful for finding details about historical figures.
• Content (adhere as closely as possible to the text without interpreting it): What are the source’s key claims (formulated in your own words)? How is the text structured? Which passages are particularly striking? Which sections are unclear?

After the source criticism stage, your next step is to interpret the source by relating it to your own research question. As such, the passages which are most relevant to your research should be subjected to particularly close analysis. Any background knowledge obtained during source criticism should serve as the basis for your analysis here: for example, you can expect that a chronicle written on behalf of a city government will attempt to portray the local authorities in the best possible light. Source criticism thus serves as an initial means of evaluating the historical accuracy of a claim and of situating a source in its historical context. For you to arrive at a sound interpretation of a source, however, it is important that you go on to compare it to other sources as well as to relevant secondary literature, taking care to identify any similarities and differences. Other texts can add to – or even explain – the claims made in a source; however, they can also shift the focus on to other aspects or refute its claims. Similarly, you should also use relevant source interpretations provided by other researchers in secondary literature to critically reflect upon and evaluate your own interpretations.  

As a researcher, you will often find that your interest in a source does not correspond to its author’s original intentions, as may very well have already become clear during the source criticism stage. As a result, it can sometimes be difficult to find answers to your specific questions. For example, trivial comments recorded in an interrogation protocol may be of more relevance to your research question than those statements which address the actual offence. As such, source interpretation represents a quest for hidden, implicit meaning.

To this end, it is important that you consider the following aspects:

• Key Concepts: What are the central concepts employed in the text?
• Language and Rhetoric: Use of tropes (metaphors, metonymies, etc.), figures of speech, symbolism, technical terms and expressions, etc.
• Patterns of Argument
• Gaps, Omissions and Rejections: What is not mentioned? What is refuted? Always bear in mind the following rule which applies to every text: “To write is to silence”.

In recent years, more and more sources have been made available in digital form. The result is that researchers now have access to more sources than ever before, with historians spending less time working in archives. Analysis of digitised sources, however, should not necessarily be approached any differently.

Nevertheless, digitisation does allow for new forms of source analysis which are no longer based on conventional hermeneutics. These often involve (statistical) analysis of large, digitally accessible text collections. These approaches all fall within the emerging field of “digital humanities”.

Analytic approaches based on the methods of digital humanities include:

• Quantifying the use of certain words and concepts (word field analysis, semantic analysis, text mining). These approaches all form part of the already well-developed field of computational linguistics.
• Using georeferencing and cartographic representations to identify spatial patterns.
• Depicting relationships in the form of networks and subjecting these to statistical analyses (historical network analysis [HNA]).
• Simulating historical processes using mathematical models.

Many of these approaches are not completely new. However, digitalisation and the development of specialist software now make them much easier to carry out, thereby ensuring that they are available to a much wider research community.

Nonetheless, electronic sources – whether created in genuinely digital form or subsequently digitised – do come with their own drawbacks. Their instability presents a particular challenge for source criticism, since they can be altered at any time in ways which are barely detectable. A further danger is that the proliferation of digital sources may encourage researchers to neglect non-digitised sources, even if only because the latter are more difficult to access.