Wikipedia talk:Identifying and using primary sources: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 14:53, 4 February 2023

Revision as of 02:37, 28 March 2023

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:There is no category of source that is always error-free. When the goal is quoting a document, then the original source is authoritative for what was said, but not for whether it said something true. [[User:WhatamIdoing|WhatamIdoing]] ([[User talk:WhatamIdoing|talk]]) 20:59, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

== Plagiarized/poor quality links in "Are news-reporting media secondary or primary sources?" subsection ==

In general, library reference landing pages targeted at students are not of high quality, as they are often copied and pasted from other sites and massively simplified for an undergraduate audience. So, as can be expected when relying on what are essentially freshman handouts, the ones cited here have serious issues.

One page cited, from Yale University, is (as the essay states) self-contradictory, listing newspapers/magazines as both primary and secondary sources. The library page is also rather slapdash and poorly written and does not do much, by itself, to support this essay's claim that there is a clean line delineating primary vs. secondary newspaper articles. A more clear picture can be found in [https://primarysources.yale.edu/identify-types-formats/serials-newspapers-journals-magazines Yale's Primary Source collection] -- indicating, if nothing else, how Yale interprets its own guidelines:

"Like books, serials can function both as primary sources and secondary sources depending on how one approaches them. Age is an important factor in determining whether a serial publication is most useful as a primary or a secondary source. For instance, an article on slavery in a recent issue of the ''Journal of Southern History'' should be read as a secondary source, as a scholar’s attempt to interpret primary source materials such as ledgers, diaries, or government documents in order to write an account of the past. An article on slavery published in the ''Journal of Southern History'' in 1935, however, can be read not only as a secondary source on slavery but also—and perhaps more appropriately—as a primary source that reveals how scholars in the 1930s interpreted slavery."

This is saying two things: one, that primary vs. secondary as it applies to books and media articles is less a matter of what the sources ''are'' than how they are ''used''; and two, that the distinction has to do with context and cultural factors, as anything written in the 1930s about slavery -- even a scholarly source that is doing some interpretation -- is going to be inextricable from a pre-Civil Rights Era perspective, and perhaps less useful for what it says about slavery than what its existence says about those scholars.

Meanwhile, the supposed James Cook University material does not, in fact, originate from James Cook University. If you actually read the "secondary sources" section, you will notice that it is cut off after "More generally, secondary sources...". The oldest version on the Internet Archive is cut off in the same place, suggesting that it was copied (poorly) from somewhere else. Googling the text turned up a lot of sketchy term-paper sites, but I believe I have found the origin: [https://eslm.lpude.in/LIBRARY%20AND%20INFORMATION%20SCIENCES/BLIS/DLIS105_REFERENCE_SOURCES_AND_SERVICES/index.html#p=25 a textbook/pamphlet from Lovely Professional University]. Skimming through this pamphlet, it seems of somewhat low quality; the sources it cites are [https://www.library.illinois.edu/village/primarysource/mod1/pg8.htm this University of Illinois guide], which basically says what the Yale guide does ("it is important to consider by whom, how and for what purpose it was produced"), and something called "buzzle.com," [https://web.archive.org/web/20001214082400/http://www.buzzle.com/about.asp which does not seem particularly reliable and is part user-generated]. The irony of a Wikipedia essay about usable sources depending upon a plagiarized source is left to the reader.

The other university library pages' text has also been heavily copied-and-pasted across other university libraries, but it's hard to tell which was the original since most are are unsigned. Only the last page given (University of Michigan) lists its author, a graduate student. Basically, the whole thing is a mess, but at the very least the plagiarized ones need to go. [[User:Gnomingstuff|Gnomingstuff]] ([[User talk:Gnomingstuff|talk]]) 02:37, 28 March 2023 (UTC)