I disagree that editing turns a primary source into a secondary source.
And I disagree that we make that distinction in-project.
I also disagree that newspaper articles are secondary sources.
Some are, some aren't.
Is the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle a primary source? Yes. Do you believe
that every event there described is being described by an eye-witness?
No. In fact it's possibly doubtful whether any of it is eye-witness
testimony. Being an eye-witness is not what makes an article primary
or secondary.
-----Original Message-----
From: David Goodman <dgoodmanny(a)gmail.com>
To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Sent: Tue, Aug 25, 2009 3:42 pm
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Secondary sources
Wikipedia is not the same as the academic world.
From the point of view of an historian analyzing sources, a newspaper
is considered a primary source, and you will find them so classified
in any manual on doing research in history or any listing of sources
at the end of an historical book or article. From the POV of
Wikipedia, we've been considering it a secondary source, which is the
way most people think of it.
what we call primary sources: is the archival material that an
historian also calls primary sources, but normally lists separately in
a bibliography. if the reporter's notebooks are preserved, that's
also a primary source. The analysis of the differences between the
primary sources20in attempting to reconstruct what happened is what
historians do. The articles & monographs other historians publish
giving their analysis is what they consider the secondary sources.
Similarly, in science, the actual archival primary sources are, in a
sense, the lab notebooks--and they are preserved as such, for patents
and the like. But a primary scientific paper is the one reporting the
work, and a secondary paper is a review.
The Wikipedia definition is a term of art at Wikipedia, used because
we need some way of differentiating between material which is edited,
and that which is not. The primary sources are the unedited reports.
As a newspaper is edited, its a secondary source.
David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG
On Tue, Aug 25, 2009 at 6:30 PM, <wjhonson(a)aol.com> wrote:
Sure a manuscript is an unpublished primary source, or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.
=0
A>
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(a)googlemail.com>
To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)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(a)aol.com wrote:
From: WJhonson(a)aol.com
To: wikien-l(a)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(a)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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