Wikipedia:Identifying and using tertiary sources: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 05:09, 30 June 2018

Revision as of 05:11, 30 June 2018

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* [[Encyclopedia]]s, [[Compendium|compendia]], and [[Dictionary|dictionaries]] (whether general or topical).

* "[[Coffee table book]]s" and "[https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/6486.Best_Bathroom_Books bathroom books]".

* School [[textbooks]], especially below the graduate school level.

* School [[textbooks]], especially below the graduate-school level.{{efn|Many multi-author edited volumes used in undergraduate courses on advanced topics consist of (or at least contain, depending on the chapter) secondary material; undergrad basic textbooks do not not. Nor do textbooks below the university level, or other childrens' books. Be especially wary of citations to books about animals; the majority of them in print are dumbed-down material intended for children.}}

* [[Bibliographies|Bibliographies]] and [[Bibliographic index|indexes]], [[Concordance (publishing)|concordances]], [[Thesaurus|thesauri]], [[database]]s, [[almanac]]s, [[guide book|travel guides]], [[field guide]]s, [[timelines]], and similar works.

* [[Abstract (summary)|Abstracts]] of journal articles, legislation, etc., provided by indexing services and specialized search engines.

Some of the above kinds of tertiary sources are considered forms of [[secondary literature]] in some disciplines, but {{em|remain tertiary}} for Wikipedia's purposes, including in those disciplines. Not understanding this is a common error by subject-matter experts new to Wikipedia editing.

=== Exceptions ===

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'''Outdated material:''' An obsolete source cannot be used to "trump" newer reliable sources that present updated information, most especially when the older source states or implies a negative that cannot be proven but can be disproven easily by new data. A pertinent example (detailed [[Wikipedia:Inaccuracy#Examples of verifiable yet potentially inaccurate material|here]]) is a prominent dictionary asserting that a specific phrase was first used in publication in a certain year, while later research found older examples, disproving this assertion (with its implicit negative, that there were no earlier cases). Because most tertiary works take a long time to assemble, or (in more dynamic media) are in a constant state of being incrementally updated, it is fairly likely that some particular pieces of information in such a work have already been surpassed by the newer work of others. Some information in tertiary sources may already be obsolete before they even see publication. Sometimes the very conceptual framework behind such a work becomes obsolete, given the passage of enough time, with enough advancement and reorganization in the field to which it pertains. E.g., an decades-old tertiary list of species within a genus, based on outmoded ideas of classification, cannot be used to contradict or seek undue weight against a widely accepted re-classification arrived at through more modern research.

== Notes ==

{{notelist}}

== See also ==