[Mid] Primary, Secondary and Tertiary Sources for Documentation

The Lady Saradwen wrote:

<I know that I fear the documentation aspect from another point of
view... The primary,secondary and tertiary sources. After 20 years, I am
still very cloudy about this and hope that one day a Laurel can set me
straight on this..>

I am no Laurel, but I would like to try to explain sufficiently for her.

Primary documentation is the real thing. What the person living in the middle
ages wrote about the subject. Or a photograph that an archeologist took of
burial finds dating back to the middle ages. Or a photograph of a work of art
or architecture that was done in the middle ages. That sort of thing.

Secondary documentation is when someone cites what the actual middle ages
person wrote. Most books on a given subject will be secondary documentation
and, if you wish to find their sources for information, you would look in their
bibliographies. There you would probably find good sources of primary
documentation.

Tertiary documentation is when someone cites what the person citing the
originator wrote. A good example of tertiary documentation is an encyclopedia.

Whether a translation is primary or secondary documentation is a subject hotly
debated among scholars and SCA members alike.

Yours in service to the Dream,
Hana Lore an dem Fenn, Minister of the Arts and Sciences to the Canton of
Rimsholt in the Barony of Andelcrag, Pentamer, Kingdom of the Middle
(amy.venlos@ey.com)
From: AMY.VENLOS@ey.com
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Received on Tue May 27 16:48:16 1997