Primary vs. Secondary Source

[bunnyjadwiga]

After 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...)

Comments

Why not dump the distinction

[bunnyjadwiga.livejournal.com]

Yes, the only reason in the academic library we have to think about primary vs. secondary is that professors have a charming habit of assigning students to find 'primary sources' for their writing assignment.

That not being true in the SCA, why bother beating the dead horse in the SCA the way we seem to?

Admittedly, many people seem to have difficulty understanding what is and is not high quality documentation to period... evaluating sources is something that is harder to teach than I ever imagined.

Re: Why not dump the distinction

[susannaknits.livejournal.com]

Agreed all around. I never really saw the value of the distinction, as compared to the importance of quality information. IMHO, the distinction only really has merit in teaching people to evaluate their sources. Part of deciding the relative merit of a source has to do with knowing the origin of the information and what axe that particular source might be grinding. The closer you are to a "primary" source, the fewer opinions have been added, and the easier it is to see that axe-grinding.

Some of us have internalized that concept through our academic careers, but a lot of people in the SCA don't have that benefit.

Re: Why not dump the distinction

[nicolaa5.livejournal.com]

One thing I always mention when I teach research/documentation is that the primary/secondary/tertiary distinction is only a construct of convenience for beginners who do not yet know the critical questions to ask about sources. It plants the idea in one's mind, and then you go from there.

We stopped talking about primary/secondary/tertiary not long after my first year courses in history. Even though it took me until later in my studies to realize that different disciplines had different definitions for these terms, the need to use sources critically did not change from discipline to discipline (although some of the questions to ask did.)