Wikipedia:Identifying and using primary sources: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 23:26, 1 November 2011

Revision as of 03:58, 7 November 2011

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The concept of [[primary source|primary]], [[secondary source|secondary]], and [[tertiary source]]s originated with the academic discipline of [[historiography]]. The point was to give historians a handy way to indicate how close the source of a piece of information was to the actual events.

Importantly, the concept developed to deal with "events", rather than ideas or abstract concepts. A primary source was a source that was created at about the same time as the event, regardless of the source's contents. So while a dictionary is a classic example of a tertiarysecondary source for the meanings of words, an ancient dictionary is actually a primary source—for the meanings of words in the ancient world.

There are no quaternary sources: Either the source is primary, or it describes, comments on, or analyzes primary sources (in which case, it is secondary), or it relies heavily or entirely on secondary sources (in which case, it is tertiary). The first published source for any given fact is '''always''' considered a primary source.

The historians' concept has been extended into other fields, with partial success.

==Wikipedia is not the real world==