Most Trust Museums as Sources of Historical Information

Twenty years ago, we learned from Rosenzweig and Thelen’s The Presence of the Past: Popular Uses of History in American Life that history museums were the most trusted source of history, outperforming history professors, history teachers, and even history books. Despite its methodological richness, what most of us recall from The Presence of the Past is that 80% of respondents thought museums were at the high end of a scale of trustworthiness, whereas the numbers for other sources were lower: grandparents, 69%; eyewitnesses to history, 64%; college history professors, 54%; high school history teachers, 36%; nonfiction books, 32%; and movies and television, 11%.

In a small way, we have revisited at least part of that question of trustworthiness, and this time included the Internet. In an AASLH 2018 broader population sampling, conducted by Wilkening Consulting, we asked 1,000 people about the trustworthiness of four history sources, and a generic “museums. ”We found that 81% of respondents ranked history museums and historic sites as “absolutely” or “somewhat” trustworthy—making them more trustworthy than history textbooks and nonfiction, high school history teachers, and the internet as sources of history information.