The textbook systematically presents source studies as a scientific discipline and a method of scientific knowledge. The concept of the textbook is based on the current status of source study as a rigorous science, the understanding of a historical source as an objectified result of human activity / a product of culture and the transformation of the object of source study from a historical source through the species system of the corpus of historical sources to the empirical reality of the historical world. Special attention is paid to the ideological and epistemological foundations of source study, its theory and method. The fundamental novelty of the textbook is that for the first time the three components of modern source study are clearly separated. In the first section, source study is presented as a scientific discipline and as a system-forming basis for humanitarian knowledge. In the second section, source study is positioned as a method of obtaining new, rigorous knowledge about man and society in their historical perspective. In the third section, source study is considered as a tool for historical research. For students studying in bachelor's and specialist's programs, and master's degree students in the humanities, as well as for everyone interested in the nature of historical knowledge and ways of obtaining it.