Wikipedia:Identifying and using primary sources: Difference between revisions
Content deleted Content added
WhatamIdoing (talk | contribs) |
WhatamIdoing (talk | contribs) |
||
Line 40:
It's not a matter of counting up the number of sources in a chain. The first published source is always a primary source, but it is possible to have dozens of sources, without having any secondary or tertiary sources. If Alice writes down an idea, and Bob simply quotes her work, and Chris refers Bob's quotation, and Daisy cites Chris, and so forth, you very likely have a string of primary sources, rather than one primary, one secondary, one tertiary, and all subsequent sources with made-up classification names.
===Characteristics of a secondary source===
* A secondary source is based on primary sources. Secondary sources are not required to provide you with a bibliography, but you should have some reason to believe that the material in the source is not entirely new. For example, century-old love letters on display at a museum are primary sources; a secondary source might analyze the contents of these letters. The fact that the analysis is based on these primary would be evident from the description in the source, even if the paper contained no footnotes.
* A secondary source is significantly separated from these primary sources. A reporter's notebook is an (unpublished) primary source, and the news story published by the reporter based on those notes is also a primary source. This is because the sole purpose of the notes in the notebook is to produce the news story. If a journalist later reads dozens of these primary-source news stories and uses those articles to write a book about a major event, then this resulting work is a secondary source.
* A secondary source ''usually'' provides analysis, commentary, evaluation, context, and interpretation. High-quality secondary sources often synthesize together multiple primary sources, in due proportion to the expert-determined quality of the primary sources.
===All sources are primary for something===
Every source is the primary source for something, whether it be the name of the author, its title, its date of publication, and so forth. For example, no matter what kind of book it is, the [[copyright page]] inside the front of a book is a primary source for the date of the book's publication.
More importantly, many high-quality sources contain both primary and secondary material. A peer-reviewed journal article may begin by summarizing previously published work to place the new work in context (which is secondary material) before proceeding into a description of a novel idea (which is primary material). An author might write a book about an event that is based mostly on primary-source news stories, but he might add occasional information about personal experiences or new material from recent interviews. The work based on previously published sources is [[#Not a matter of counting the number of links in the chain|probably]] a secondary source; the new information is a primary source.
=="Secondary" is not another way to spell "good"==
| |||