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Re: Please excuse this rant, raving,thing that I have going on today, but I'm very tired and cranky,BU



>Is it me, or do people not understand that printed materials (including >newspapers) are not primary sources?????
>Unless it's one of a kind, unique, etc. it's secondary????
>I must be missing something, but, the point of a newspaper is to reach A >LOT of people at once, it's printed, it's secondary???? Yes???

Oh dear.  I'm afraid that you've got it wrong.  

"Primary sources" do not have to be unique, they simply have to be first-hand accounts of something.  (I don't have any reference works right here, so I can't quote a good definition.)  

Secondary sources tend to be analyses of other sources, including (we usually hope) primary sources.  An encyclopedia or text book would be a secondary source, at least to the contemporary users (see below).  A History of the Third Reich written today would be a secondary source.  Hitler's Das Kapital would, by now, be a primary source of Nazism.  (I don't know why these particular examples come to mind, but, as you say, it's late in the day.)

Sometimes secondary sources - like a text book - can become primary sources for particular kinds of research.  Old text books, for example, would be the primary sources for an investigation of, say, racism in the teaching of history in the 1920s.  

Newspaper clippings - like other published materials - can be very, very important primary source materials.  Beyond that, from an archival standpoint, collections of clippings very often reflect the person or group collecting them and are, by that definition, archival (not "just" previously published items).

You may not like clippings.  You may find preserving them a royal pain. You may decide to throw them out.  But, please, don't do so because you think they aren't primary sources.  

Sally Gibson (Toronto)

>>> "Geri E. Solomon" <Geri.E.Solomon@HOFSTRA.EDU> 05/16/01 04:33pm >>>
Please excuse this rant, raving, thing that I have going on today, but I'm very tired and cranky, BUT....

Is it me, or do people not understand that printed materials (including newspapers) are not primary sources?????
Unless it's one of a kind, unique, etc. it's secondary????
I must be missing something, but, the point of a newspaper is to reach A LOT of people at once, it's printed, it's secondary???? Yes???

I understand that people seem all fuzzy and cuddley towards newspaper clippings (why, i can't figure out!) but if you ask me, if you're that fuzzy and happy with clippings, what do you feel about original manuscripts and unique documents????  Come see our original photos, correspondence, diaries, scrapbooks, and memorabilia, then get all gushy, leave the newsclips out of the picture as far as I'm concerned!!!!!

--Geri Solomon

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