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Unpublished primary sources are regularly used in academic research.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@aol.com wrote:
From: WJhonson@aol.com To: wikien-l@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@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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