Sure a manuscript is an unpublished primary source, or an ancient book only held in 12 libraries.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. 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 <andrewrtur...@googlemail.com> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l@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 Unpublished primary sources are regularly used in academic research. ----- wjhon...@aol.com wrote: > From: wjhon...@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, > andrewrtur...@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. > > > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l > _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
