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The primary sources available to you on this site have been chosen by Brooklyn Historical Society Education staff to reflect the themes of the Worklore exhibit and provide examples of constructed response questions that support the NY State Learning Standards for Social Studies.

Why use primary source materials?
Primary sources are a window into the past. They show us the thoughts, feelings and immediate reactions of eyewitnesses. They offer students a sense of "being there" when history was made. Primary sources provide evidence of what happened in the past.

But, Beware! Primary sources also have their limitations. The person who created the source might have had only limited knowledge to work from. Two witnesses to a fire might see different things from their different vantage points, recording only part of the story. The person who created the source might also have a point of view, even prejudice, consciously or unconsciously, which they are trying to support. Readers should be on the look out for racism, sexism, and religious and ethnic intolerance in their sources.

In other words, evidence alone does not tell us what happened in the past. Evidence must be interpreted. Just like a detective interprets evidence of a crime in an investigation, a historian investigates evidence in primary sources, puts it together with what he or she already knows about the past, and creates as complex picture of what happened in the past and why. To do history as historians do, students must carefully observe primary source materials and use them to ask question about the past. They must then look again at the materials and see which questions can be answered from closer observation and which require more research. Research might include looking at other primary sources for more evidence.

The primary sources and constructed response questions included here help build the following Social Studies skills recommended for the Core Curriculum.

Getting Information

Students shall be able to:

Identify a variety of sources of information:
• Reference works, newspapers, magazines, primary and secondary sources
• Tables graphs, charts, diagrams

Recognize advantages and limitations of various sources

Locate information in print and non-print sources:
• Main elements
• Main ideas
• Supportive elements

Core Curriculum Content Understandings:
• Industrial Growth and Expansion
• Urbanization

Core Curriculum Concepts/Themes:
Technology, change, human systems, movement of people and products, identity