The nature of modern history

Modern historians work with an enormous range of evidence, and the historic sites and sources option asks how that evidence is found, preserved and read. An archive is an organised collection of records kept because of their lasting value: government files, court and police records, business ledgers, letters, photographs, maps, film and sound recordings.

In Australia, institutions such as the National Archives of Australia, state archives and the Australian War Memorial hold records that let historians trace decisions, lives and communities. Archives preserve evidence from particular people and institutions. Some records were created during the events studied and others later; their purposes may include administration, persuasion or recollection. Evaluate authorship, context and what a record actually supports rather than treating archival preservation as a guarantee of accuracy.

Digitisation has changed access. Searchable online collections, such as the digitised newspapers on Trove, can let a student far from a major library or archive read sources that once required a visit in person. Keyword searching can help locate relevant material, but the results depend on coverage, indexing and the terms used.

Yet digitisation is selective: institutions choose what to scan, text-recognition software makes errors, and physical features such as marginal notes, paper type or the order of documents within a file can be lost. Historians therefore ask what has not been digitised as well as what has.

Historic sites are also sources. To reconstruct a site and build a chronology, historians combine layered archaeological deposits (stratigraphy), datable objects such as coins or bottle styles, building plans, maps, photographs and written descriptions. Scientific techniques extend this: ground-penetrating radar can indicate buried features without excavation, whereas airborne LiDAR maps surface relief and can reveal traces of earthworks. These observations require interpretation and, where appropriate, further investigation. DNA comparison can contribute to identifying human remains alongside other evidence.

Oral history, recorded interviews with people who lived through events, can add personal and community experiences that are absent or underrepresented in particular official records. Do not assume that every official account excludes a group or that every interview supplies missing facts. Recollections are shaped by later personal and social contexts; compare accounts and other evidence when testing claims about events.