Finding information on the origin of Valentine’s Day using only internet sources did not prove to be a challenge. After looking at a number of sites, most seemed to support the same theories, with only minor variations. Because of the ambiguous nature of the origin of Valentine’s Day in the first place, it is harder to assess the validity of the sources and thus my comfort level in using them. My biggest concern with using sources from the internet is the uncertainty in knowing who was directly responsible for writing the text and where he and/or she obtained his or her information—what sources did they use? How much research was conducted? While it is equally true that you cannot trust printed sources for many of the same reasons, at least there is generally an author and documented list sources that can be traced. However, it could be argued that if in looking at a number of sources they all support, generally, the same theories, there must be some truth to what is being written. Because of this, I was more comfortable using a combination of three of the sources to create an essay. For this essay I pulled the information from Wikipedia—searching for St. Valentine and Valentine’s Day, The History Channel, and americancatholic.org. I felt by using sources from three very different perspectives (collective history, commercialized history and religious history) I would cover the broadest possible range of theories. Though I would not feel comfortable citing any of these sources in a more serious research paper, because they do reconfirm one another, I feel relatively comfortable with their accuracy for the purposes of the assignment.
