Primary vs. Secondary Source
May. 26th, 2009 09:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyjadwigaAfter investigating heavily, my boss-- who is an excellent resource librarian-- has decided that the library instruction material will say, on the subject of "Primary vs. Secondary Source" :
"Talk to your professor."
Because the definitions of primary vs. secondary source, while similar in intent, vary from discipline to discipline. It's hard to convince scholars in specific disciplines that this is so, but, it is. Scientists believe the first scholarly publication by the original investigators describing the experiment is the primary source. Historians believe something that was written or drawn at the time by an eyewitness is a primary source; Archaeologists/Anthropologists have far more stringent rules that I don't even pretend to understand, which seem to center around the original artifact in situ (so a photo of the artifact, much less a contemporary depiction of the artifact, are secondary sources to them...)
"Talk to your professor."
Because the definitions of primary vs. secondary source, while similar in intent, vary from discipline to discipline. It's hard to convince scholars in specific disciplines that this is so, but, it is. Scientists believe the first scholarly publication by the original investigators describing the experiment is the primary source. Historians believe something that was written or drawn at the time by an eyewitness is a primary source; Archaeologists/Anthropologists have far more stringent rules that I don't even pretend to understand, which seem to center around the original artifact in situ (so a photo of the artifact, much less a contemporary depiction of the artifact, are secondary sources to them...)
