[WikiEN-l] Secondary sources

[wjhonson at aol.com]

Sure a manuscript is an unpublished primary source, or an ancient book 
only held in 12 libraries.
However if that item is published that does not create a secondary 
source.
And if that item includes interviews with other people, that does not 
make it a secondary source.

A primary source is merely the first time a given situation is made to 
exist.  Even if King Yog took notes before his interview with me, and 
had them typed up and collated by someone else and then read them to 
me, and I copied them out and published them, I'm not creating a 
teritary source out of all that.

Everything that comes before primary is merely part of the process of 
creating a source.  Just because there are levels and layers of 
information doesn't push the source into being secondary or teritiary.  
The notes are primary, the typed version is primary, the manuscript is 
primary, and the final published version is all still primary.  I think 
I wrote a monograph on this a while ago when someone asked me if a 
school transcript is a secondary source (it's not) their reasoning was 
that it's built from various "primary sources" which are the grading 
worksheets from various teachers.

However my reasoning is that all of the preparation is merely the 
necessary steps to create the source.

It's instructive to consider whether making images available online of 
a primary source creates a secondary source.  How about making minor 
editing corrections?  At what level of modification of a primary 
source, do you create a secondary source?  Formatting a film for TV 
size doesn't suddenly turn the film from primary to secondary.

W.J.





-----Original Message-----
From: Andrew Turvey <andrewrturvey at googlemail.com>
To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
Sent: Tue, Aug 25, 2009 11:16 am
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Secondary sources










Are we talking at cross purposes here?

"Primary sources", "secondary sources" and "tertiary sources" are 
phrases that
are regularly used by historians and other academics whose use 
considerable
pre-date Wikipedia.

Unpublished primary sources are regularly used in academic research.

----- WJhonson at aol.com wrote:
> From: WJhonson at aol.com
> To: wikien-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> Sent: Tuesday, 25 August, 2009 19:01:49 GMT +00:00 GMT Britain, 
Ireland,
Portugal
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Secondary sources
>
> In a message dated 8/25/2009 6:50:03 AM Pacific Daylight Time,
> andrewrturvey at googlemail.com writes:
>
>
> > Not quite. The first publication can be a secondary source, for 
instance
> > if the New York Times publishes an article on a car accident. A 
primary
> > source is something like a census return or, in this case, a 
witness
> > statement. >>
> >
> ------------------------
>
> That is not correct Andrew. Each "source" must be published. 
Typically
> witness statements are not themselves published. You are confusing 
first-hand
> experience with primary source. A primary souce, even a census return 
is
> not first-hand, it's merely first publication.
>
> If you took you example to extreme, then there would be no primary 
sources
> at all.
>
> W.J.
>
>
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