Old Newspapers as a Source

When we were writing the booklets for this project, we all used old newspapers to help us find some of the information we were looking for. But old newspapers only gave us part of the picture-like a handful of pieces from a jigsaw puzzle. We put these pieces together with other kinds of information, such as old letters and documents from archives, interviews that we did with people and things we learned from books. Then our pictures of the past were more complete.

We will never know some things about the past because no one wrote them down. Now, all the people who lived in that time have died, so we cannot interview them. We can also never be sure that the information in old newspapers is true until we check it with other sources. But when we look at lots of sources, we are more sure of the facts. Our pictures become clearer and easier to understand.