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First, more and more historians are questioning the appropriateness
of designating whether a source is primary or secondary. That is because
the implication that one type of information should be given more weight
than another can be prejudicial, can be used by a researcher to slant his
research toward a desired result, or can simply inadvertently mislead.
But even if we accept, for the sake of argument, the older primary
vs. secondary source model, it is irrelevant to the work of archivists.
That is because it is nothing more than a tool some researchers may find
helpful for interpreting their data. It says nothing about the document
itself or how archivists should treat it.
For example, Sandburg’s biography of Lincoln is a secondary source for Lincoln,
but it is an important primary source for the study of Sandburg. Therefore,
whether a document is a primary or secondary source depends solely on
how it is used by a researcher; it has nothing to do with some inherent
quality of the document itself. More relevant for the work of archivists,
the fact that Sandburg’s Lincoln is a crucial primary source for Sandburg
scholars does not mean it should be kept in an archives. It’s still a
book even though it’s a primary source and should be treated according
to library, not archival, principles.
In other words, archivists should never use the term “primary sources”
to refer to their holdings. We don’t preserve sources of any kind; we preserve
documents. Our documents don’t become sources until they are used, and
even then, they are sources only for the researcher, not the archivist.
Leon C. Miller, Manuscripts Librarian
Special Collections, Jones Hall, Howard-Tilton Memorial Library
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From someone who works with vital records (i.e., birth,
death & marriage records...) We treat the first -- the original
-- record created as the "primary" record. Once an 1850 birth certificate
was copied into a volume -- or book -- which compiled all births in that
community in 1850, the volume becomes a "secondary" record -- which sometimes
contains additional information not available from the primary record. (Example:
"Female" Smith becomes Mary Smith) -- or it may contain a transcription
error (Smith becomes Smit).
Gottschalk's definition still applies if we can
safely assume that the original certificate was completed by an eyewitness...and
the transcription into the volume is completed by someone who was not an
eyewitness. Of course, those corrections/clarifications/additions which
are included in the volume (secondary record) help evolve that primary
record...And one might argue that the entry is at least partially a primary
record -- since the change may have been entered by the "eyewitness" who
accepted the data from a parent, physician, etc. And who is to say that
the physician who completed the initial birth certificate knew how to spell
the infant's name correctly in the first place?
Paul Bergeron
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In the discussion concerning primary and secondary sources, Paul Bergeron
has raised the question of truth. Primary sources, however, do not per
se contain the truth, neither objectively nor historically. What the eyewitness
has recorded may be (intentionally or not) be false, and even if the recorded
fact was correct, it might not be the "historical truth" in which positivists
believed (see M.R.Trouillot's: Silencing the Past, 1995).
See James O'Toole article "On the idea of uniqueness", in" The American
Archivist vol. 57 (1994) pp. 632-658 an my paper "Can we trust information
?" in: The International Information & Library Review 29 (1997) 333-338;
also on: http://www.unesco.org/webworld/infoethics/speech/ketelaar.htm
Eric Ketelaar
Professor of Archivistics
at the universities of Leiden and Amsterdam
The Netherlands
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Florida Department of State
Bureau of Archives & Records Management |
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