Please excuse me if my title is a little confusing. So, I’m starting to do some research into a historical topic and I’m having a bit of trouble with discerning which sources are good and which are not. This comes up for me because I was going through the Wikipedia article and going through each source. One of the primary sources for the article is a travel and poetry book - on a historical matter. Not only that but I believe it misquotes the book, but that’s neither here nor there.
My initial thought is that a textbook or study is more reputable than a travel/poetry book, especially since that travel book does not even have sources listed. Am I wrong in believing this? If so, are there other types of sources that may seem inadequate as source material but are often commonly used?
Thanks for your time and I really hope this made a lick of sense.
You might find this section of the FAQ, and particularly this series of Monday Methods (beginning with Part 1`) posts, helpful.
When you say it's a "primary source" for the Wikipedia article, do you mean that it's a primary source in the historical sense (ie it was written during the time period or event you're interested in studying), or just that it's the most important source?
"Travel books" can absolutely be important sources for understanding history when used as primary sources. That said, it's important to contextualize them as much as you would any other source. They reflect not only how the world was, but also how the author thought the world should be. My masters thesis, for example, was primarily focused on analyzing an 18th century travel guidebook to the highway connecting Buenos Aires and Lima - El Lazarillo de Ciegos Caminantes. In several instances it seems to diverge from the archaeological evidence we have of similar roads in the same time period. Does that make it a less useful source? No, it just means we have to think about why a particular authors "vision" of a place was different than what we can see from other sources of evidence.