Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Examples in which a source can be both primary and secondary include an obituary [23] or a survey of several volumes of a journal counting the frequency of articles on a certain topic. [23] Whether a source is regarded as primary or secondary in a given context may change, depending upon the present state of knowledge within the field. [24]
Scipione Amati's History of the Kingdom of Woxu (1615), an example of a secondary source. In scholarship, a secondary source [1] [2] is a document or recording that relates or discusses information originally presented elsewhere. A secondary source contrasts with a primary, or original, source of the information being discussed. A primary ...
A primary source can have all of these qualities, and a secondary source may have none of them. Deciding whether primary, secondary or tertiary sources are appropriate on any given occasion is a matter of good editorial judgment and common sense, not merely mindless, knee-jerk reactions to classification of a source as "primary" or "secondary".
Secondary sources are written accounts of history based upon the evidence from primary sources. These are sources which, usually, are accounts, works, or research that analyze, assimilate, evaluate, interpret, and/or synthesize primary sources. These are not as authoritative and are supplemental documents concerning the subject under consideration.
Secondary sources may draw on primary sources and other secondary sources to create a general overview; or to make analytic or synthetic claims. [3] [4] Tertiary sources are publications such as encyclopedias or other compendia that sum up secondary and primary sources. For example, Wikipedia itself is a tertiary source.
Many sources contain a combination of primary/secondary or secondary/tertiary material, sometimes all three. A source that is secondary in one context may be primary in another (e.g. a history book is a secondary source for the facts it reports, but a primary source for what the author wrote about an event).
"The distinction between primary and secondary sources is only meaningful when applied to symbolic sources. Moreover, the distinction is not a sharp one. Since a source is only a source in a specific historical context, the same source object can be both a primary or secondary source according to what it is used for.
Whether a source is primary, secondary or tertiary can depend on the topic that an article is covering. For example, the summary for policy makers from the IPCC is a secondary source for the article Global warming but it would be a primary source if used for the article Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.