Have you ever read something, or heard someone make a statement that had wondering where they got that information? Maybe it sounded totally off-the-wall bonkers, or it was something that sounded interesting. Either way, you wanted to learn more about it.
So maybe you asked the person where they learned that information, or you flipped to the back of the book to see what was in the notes and bibliography.
But what is the source of information? Did they hear from a friend of friend, read it on news site, a magazine? Is the source someone who experienced the event personally? Or someone who wrote a biography?
Do these differences mean anything?
Types of Sources
In this instance, when I say, “types of sources”, I don’t mean what probably first pops in your mind when someone says source (or reference). Yes, books, magazines, articles, letters, and recorded conversations are all types of sources. But they can be further divided into primary, secondary or tertiary sources.
So what is the difference?
To help explain, I’m going to use one of the books I’m reading currently to give some examples.
Understanding the Sources Listed in a Book
First, I want us to take a minute look at and understand how to find the sources in a given book, and what the different sections mean.
So, if you look on my homepage, in the sidebar I have a section that lists what I am reading now. One of the books I’m reading is Dragonslayer: The Legend of Erich Ludendorff. After the main body of the book, there are three sections: Notes, Bibliography and the Index. We’re not going to worry about the Index in this post.
The Notes section is where the author cites the source for each chapter in the order the source was used. It’s also fairly common for the author to include some additional context for the source that did not fit into the main text for whatever reason.
The Bibliography is the complete list of sources in alphabetical order by the author’s last name. Bibliographies can also include books the author read but chose not to use (CMOS 2015).
Now that we know where to find author’s sources, let’s take a closer look and see if we can figure out a few examples of primary and secondary sources.
What is a primary source?
In short, a primary source is something that is produced by someone who had first-hand experience with an event. They may have participated in or witnessed the event. If they decide to make some type of a recording recounting their experience, the resulting letter, blog post or video/audio recording is considered a primary source (Benjamin 2001).
In the below picture, we can see that the source is Ludendorff himself. Ludendorff wrote his autobiography, and now Jay Lockenour is using Ludendorff’s own words to provide context and information for his own book.
What is a secondary source?
Secondary sources use compile information from primary sources and generally provide some sort of analysis. An easy example of a secondary source is the biography on Ludendorff. But let’s go back to the Notes section of the book and see what it looks like there.
This time, we have a few examples in the below image. We can see the entries for D.J. Goodspeed, Chickering, Richard M. Watt and Manfred Nebelin are all secondary sources. Each source is either another biography on Ludendorff or is about a given time period (Lockenour 2021).
Bonus time: You probably noticed that one of the names in the example was not like the other ones. That is because this is not the first time that Lockenour used Chickering as a source. So you provide the sources full name the first time you cite them, then you only have to use their last name in later citations.
By the way, Chickering’s full name is Roger Chickering.
Tertiary sources are a thing now?
When I watched Abby Cox’s excellent video on how to do better research, I was surprised to learn that tertiary sources are indeed, a thing. I should not have been. They are discussed in A Student’s Guide to History, and I have had that book for longer than I will admit to here.
A Student’s Guide to History describes a tertiary source as something that pulls from secondary sources, and not primary sources (Benjamin 2001).
Abby Cox explains that things like YouTube videos are tertiary sources. This blog is also a tertiary source. Neither YouTube nor blog posts are things that you will cite in a research paper. Unless your paper is about the influence of YouTube on historical research. Then, knock yourself out.
What about Wikipedia?
When you were in school, you probably heard your teacher say you couldn’t use Wikipedia as a resource. It wasn’t considered a trustworthy source. Anyone can edit it, and there isn’t an easy way to verify the credentials or experience of the person making the edits (at least not that I am aware of).
To a certain extent, they are right. You really shouldn’t be using Wikipedia as your main source. With the above information about primary, secondary and tertiary sources, I would say that Wikipedia is a tertiary source. It’s a great starting point, but it shouldn’t be your end point.
The nice thing about Wikipedia is that they do include citations throughout the article that are linked to a list of sources at the bottom of the article.
That being said, you shouldn’t just blindly trust these linked sources. Multiple times I have clicked on a linked article to find that it didn’t go anywhere or the content was no longer available.
However, if the link does work, now you have source you can read and evaluate. And from there, you can start to go down a source rabbit hole.
If the linked resource is a book or magazine article, you can take a field trip to the library. Even if they don’t have that specific book in the library, they can look into getting loaned from another library, and help you find other resources related to your chose topic in the meantime.
What is this magical library place you speak of?
It’s a cool place to get free resources, participate in community events, and study. Check out this post I wrote a couple of months ago to find out more.
Things to Consider When Evaluating Sources
Okay, let’s recap. Now we have a basic understanding of what primary, secondary and tertiary sources are. We know we can find them at the library. Or your local bookstore. Or a friend’s bookshelf. I dunno, maybe try this new-fangled Internet thing too.
But how do I know if this source is any good?
Well. A good place to start is by looking at the Works Cited and Bibliography. Does it have either?
Look at the publication dates of the sources. Are they all from the last twenty years? Or is the most recent source from fifty years ago? You generally want to see sources from a range of years. Our interpretation of events changes over time. This is starting to touch on a topic I mentioned briefly in my second post. Historiography is “the study of changes in the methods, interpretations and conclusions of historians over time.” (Benjamin, 2001).
Also, don’t just accept that the list of sources is good. Like I mentioned above, Wikipedia articles have citations, but they aren’t always accurate. When possible, try to take a look at some of the sources listed. See if you can find the listed source, and take a look at its sources. (It’s like source-ception…sourception?) What’s the premise of the source? Does it have a bibliography? Is it making questionable claims without much to back them up? Is it misinterpreting known facts?
Also, bias happens. We don’t think we are biased, but our experiences and any number of things in our environment shape how we view the world. Calamity to one person is victory to another. It’s not reasonable to expect an author to be completely unbiased, but they should make the effort.
In conclusion
Alright. We’ve scratched the surface of sources and how to evaluate them. If you are looking at any time of academic work, it’s pretty much always a good idea to take a look at the notes and bibliography. While just having those two sections doesn’t automatically mean the book you are reading is properly researched, it ups the chances. I also think that taking a look at the reference section helps make some longer books feel a little more approachable. You may think that you have a 400 page book to read, but with all of the references, it may be closer to 300. Still, nothing to sneeze at, but less overwhelming.
If you want some additional information about sources, I stumbled on this free course from JSTOR. I haven’t done the course yet, but JSTOR is a reputable source, widely used in academia, so I would expect it to be a good course.
As always, if you would like to see a complete list of the sources I used for this post, check out my Works Cited page.
