write two page paragraph on secondary sources.
Answers
Explanation:
In scholarship, a secondary source is a document or recording that relates or discusses information originally presented elsewhere. A secondary source contrasts with a primary source, which is an original source of the information being discussed; a primary source can be a person with direct knowledge of a situation, or a document created by such a person.
A secondary source is one that gives information about a primary source. In this source, the original information is selected, modified and arranged in a suitable format. Secondary sources involve generalization, analysis, interpretation, or evaluation of the original information.
The most accurate classification for any given source is not always obvious. Primary and secondary are relative terms, and some sources may be classified as primary or secondary, depending on how they are used. A third level, the tertiary source, such as an encyclopedia or dictionary, resembles a secondary source in that it contains analysis, but attempts to provide a broad introductory overview of a topic.
Information can be taken from a wide variety of objects, but this classification system is only useful for a class of sources that are called symbolic sources. Symbolic sources are sources that are intended to communicate information to someone. Common symbolic sources include written documents such as letters and notes, but not, for example, bits of broken pottery and scraps of food excavated from a midden, regardless of how much information can be extracted from an ancient trash heap, or how little can be extracted from a written document.
Many sources can be considered either primary or secondary, depending on the context in which they are used. Moreover, the distinction between primary and secondary sources is subjective and contextual, so that precise definitions are difficult to make. For example, if a historical text discusses old documents to derive a new historical conclusion, it is considered to be a primary source for the new conclusion, but a secondary source of information found in the old documents. Other examples in which a source can be both primary and secondary include an obituary or a survey of several volumes of a journal counting the frequency of articles on a certain topic.
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. For example, if a document refers to the contents of a previous but undiscovered letter, that document may be considered "primary", since it is the closest known thing to an original source, but if the letter is later found, it may then be considered "secondary".
Attempts to map or model scientific and scholarly communication need the concepts of primary, secondary and further "levels". One such model is the UNISIST model of information dissemination. Within such a model these concepts are defined in relation to each other, and the acceptance of this way of defining the concepts are connected to the acceptance of the model.
Some other modern languages use more than one word for the English word "source". German usually uses Sekundärliteratur ("secondary literature") for secondary sources for historical facts, leaving Sekundärquelle ("secondary source") to historiography. A Sekundärquelle is a source which can tell about a lost Primärquelle ("primary source"), such as a letter quoting from minutes which are no longer known to exist, and so cannot be consulted by the historian.
Secondary Sources
The most common type of source you are likely to encounter is a secondary source. A secondary source is any source about an event, period, or issue in history that was produced after that event, period or issue has passed.
Aside from a textbook, the most commonly assigned secondary source is a scholarly monograph - a volume on a specific subject in the past, written by an expert. Also common are articles in scholarly journals, which are similar to monographs, but on a smaller, more focused scale.
Scholarly monographs and articles are very useful sources. Written by experts, they come with a certain built-in "credibility"; articles are often peer-reviewed, meaning that they were judged worthy of publication by other experts in the field prior to going into print. Similarly, books and monographs go through elaborate pre-publication editing processes to ensure a minimum of factual errors.
Despite such precautions, however, it would be a mistake to believe that a secondary source, even if written by the most reputable of academics, is necessarily "reliable" by mere virtue of its pedigree.
Good questions to ask of any secondary source are the following:
Who is the author, and what seems to have been his or her likely intention in writing this?
When was this written, and does the date of publication potentially impact upon the book's message?
Is the argument persuasive? Is it based on well-researched evidence?
Is the text generally free of obvious bias and prejudice?
For additional tips on how to approach a secondary source, consider the questions listed in our section on book reviews, Here, let us simply close with the following:
Notwithstanding the skepticism you should bring to any text you read, you can generally assume that secondary sources assigned for college classes are solid resources: they are written by acknowledged experts in the field, they often review the historiography of their subject up until the date of their own publication, and their authors base much of their arguments on their own study of primary sources relevant to their field. Indeed, one possible definition of a secondary source is that it is a piece of scholarly writing that comments on primary sources.