What does the author leave out and why does he/she leave it out (if you know)?.Does this piece inaccurately reflect anything about the time period?.How can we verify the content of the piece?.What part of the story can we NOT tell from this document?.Who is it biased towards? Who is it biased against? What part of a story does it leave out? Sometimes a biased piece of work shows much about the history you are studying Do not state that the document “does not explain X” (if X happened later).īeing biased does not limit the value of a source! If you are going to comment on the bias of a document, you must go into detail. Do not say that the author left out information unless you have concrete proof (from another source) that they chose to leave information out.Īlso, it is obvious that the author did not have prior knowledge of events that came after the creation of the document. With a primary source document, having an incomplete picture of the whole is a given because the source was created by one person (or a small group of people), naturally they will not have given every detail of the context. The task here is not to point out weaknesses of the source, but rather to say: at what point does this source cease to be of value to us as historians? What was going on in history at the time the piece was created and how does this piece accurately reflect it?.
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