The purpose of this module is to introduce history students, at the start of their primary degree programme, to the central significance of sources - whether primary or secondary - to gaining an understanding of history as a discipline and especially how an appreciation of the nature of sources enriches the work of the history student as well as that of the professional historian.

Historians and their sources; primary and secondary sources; identification, location, accession, critical evaluation and use of sources; public and private archives; origins, ideologies and holdings; using archives: access, availability, procedure and professional practice; the range and scope of electronically available source materials; audio and visual sources; old histories and new histories; forgery, fabrication and the historian; the withdrawal, suppression and destruction of sources; professional practice and political necessity; appropriate citations of primary and secondary sources; presenting a small research project

On completion of this module the student should be able to: - Describe key features of historical inquiry and dissemination in past societies including classical Greece and Rome; medieval Christian Europe; early modern Ireland; Enlightenment Europe; nineteenth century Germany, France, Britain and Ireland; twentieth century Europe. - Understand the terms primary and secondary source as used by contemporary historians - Apply an understanding of primary and secondary sources to the a selected field of historical enquiry - Locate, analyse and evaluate a range of source materials and develop and present a written synthesis of those materials. The student should have further developed the skills of listening, evaluating, engaging, discussing and presenting historical material through effective and sustained participation in a the lectures and tutorials of the module.

On the completion of the module the student should have developed an awareness of the nature of historical research and writing and should have learned to value systematic research and evaluation of diverse and competing interpretations of historical subject matter.

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Understanding the complexity of societies in the past involves a number of skills that students master. Lectures and tutorials form a single part of the process of historical understanding alongside reading and research. Lectures are designed to introduce a student to a number of themes and events but will never provide all of the information necessary for achieving the objectives of the module. Through personal reading and research students will be better able to comprehend the sources and techniques used by historians in writing about the past. The learner will become: - knowledgeable of the key themes of sources, through reading, writing and listening; - proactive by participating in lectures and tutorials; - creative through an active engagement with the assessment instruments; - responsible by exploring and understanding why certain records and materials were kept and others not; - collaborative by working together both formally and informally on assessments; and - articulate by conveying ideas through written and verbal means throughout the module.