Can the website British History Online be used as a "source" for Pre-1500 and Pre-1700 people?

Question

This website is the official site for British History. 
https://www.british-history.ac.uk/
British History Online is a collection of nearly 1300 volumes of primary and secondary content relating to British and Irish history, and histories of empire and the British world. BHO also provides access to 40,000 images and 10,000 tiles of historic maps of the British Isles. 

Answer 1

I would say we should avoid defining large websites as good or bad sources. BHO, in a way, is like Google. It contains many different works uploaded to it. 

As a side remark, I also think all sourcing discussions should systematically go into what the source might be good or bad for, and not just whether it is good or bad overall. 

There is no source which is appropriate for every sourcing purpose, and there is no source which is not appropriate for some type of sourcing job. (Even the writings of known liars are good sources for someone writing about what that person said.)

Concerning BHO, some of the books it contains are relatively high quality transcriptions of primary sources or respected county histories, and clearly very useful for many purposes on Wikitree. (It is ALWAYS good to find confirming evidence of course.)

Answer 2

There is a vast difference between a "source" and a "reliable source". Any place you find and use information is a "source". The website seems to contact some primary sources, which are usually the most reliable sources available, although what they seem to refer to as primary sources are books. Many would dispute that they are not primary, but typically secondary sources, which are a little less reliable. Secondary sources are those that are copied from another primary source, and as such can be prone to errors due to copying and/or interpretation. What they seem to regard as secondary sources are items that have the potential to support some of their primary sources from a historical perspective, but not so much from a genealogical standpoint.

So I would think you "can" use the website as a piece of the sources for profiles, but I would want to have other supporting sources to back up what I found there and not use them as my sole source. I think there's just enough room for error that I wouldn't expect that some of their information could be in error due to either misinterpretation, conflation, or plain old copying errors. I'd expect that most of it has been fact checked and cleared from a historical perspective, but I'd just be cautious regardless.

Comments

British History Online is a not-for-profit digital library based at the Institute of Historical Research. It brings together material for British history from the collections of libraries, archives, museums, and academics.

These are the documents they have access to:

https://www.british-history.ac.uk/news

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Scott - the distinction you're making between "primary sources" and "secondary sources" isn't quite correct. The distinction is not to do with accuracy.

Something is a primary source if it is an immediate first hand account - e.g. a will, a census record or a birth certificate.

A secondary source is the result of someone's research that tells a more complete story based on primary sources - e.g. a book.

 It is entirely untrue to say that "primary sources" are (always) more accurate than "secondary sources". I have come across plenty of examples of where, for instance, a census return incorrectly states someone's age or place of birth and only when adding it all together do you find out the most likely actual facts. So much so that on wikipedia, for instance, secondary sources are preferred over primary sources.

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Well, while I didn't say they were always more reliable, I get your point. I more or less stated that primary sources were highly preferred over secondary. I suppose that's more my preference, although I've heard that from many others as well.

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I would say primary sources should guide us as much as possible. 

However at some point in each practical case we have to trust people who photocopied, translated, transcribed, and interpreted old documents. 

This is not just a problem of not having the physical possibility to go and check, but also because interpretation is sometimes something requiring special skills (for example concerning cases where fraud is suspected, or where the text is written in a dead language).

So in fact it would be a bad idea to ignore secondary sources, if there are important ones regarding the family you are working on.

Answer 3

You can use British History Online to locate/review sources, but for the pre-1700 profiles, you would want to add the source itself (from which BHO obtained its information).  That source may or may not be considered reliable.

You may get different answers from different projects.  Various projects have their own lists: see Pre-1700 and Pre-1500.

Darlene - Co-Leader, European Aristocrats Project and Medieval Project

Comments

Thank you.

Answer 4

I see some of the other answers so I can only say that the England Project does use the BHO. It holds many records such as 'His/Her Majestys Papers' and 'Policies Foreign and Domestic'. It also has the same type of sources for other countries that England dealt with, where you can often find references to the same thing that you are sourcing.

Answer 5

Thanks for these useful statements about BHO.

I don't know about anyone else, but I have sometimes found discrepancies and errors in BHO. I'm wary about it and would agree completely that while it's helpful as a general guide, one should definitely aim to find primary sources if at all possible.

Comments

There are discrepancies and errors even in primary sources.

One should aim for accuracy by any and all means.

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Absolutely. Thanks for the caveat.