|
|
Primary and Secondary Sources Versus Educational Materials
A primary source is
typically an actual literary work (a play, a poem, a novel
or short
story) or actual historical
documents related to the cultural background of that work
or the author's life. A secondary source is
typically material written about those primary sources
by professional scholars (a
biography, a book of critical essays, an entry in a specialist
encyclopedia, an article in a peer-reviewed journal
or from a database of such articles). An educational
resource is
non-peer-reviewed
material--often summarized, simplified, or otherwise designed
to introduce or explain materials on a very basic level
for amateur students or the general public. Educational materials
include
teachers' handouts
and outlines, general encyclopedia articles, guides and summaries,
book and play reviews, abstracts of longer works, and 99.9%
of literary webpages.
NB:
Primary sources and secondary sources are fine for use
in college-level
research papers, but the student should not cite, quote,
or refer
to materials from educational resources. These educational
resources are designed to teach or explain basic materials
or help students study and master materials for examinations.
They are not designed for original research.
For example, suppose
a student were writing on Shakespeare's King Lear and
its historical and religious context. The following primary
sources would be excellent for use in the paper:
-
The text of King
Lear itself as
edited in the student's textbook or in a standard scholarly
edition of the text like the Riverside Shakespeare.
-
A photofacsimile reproducing images of
actual pages from a folio edition of King Lear in
1623.
-
The text of King
James' Profanity Act of 1606, or other English historical
documents of the time.
-
A text of the King
James Bible used in Shakespeare's day--as opposed to
the revised editions (NIV or RKJ) for modern readers.
The following would be secondary
sources, and they would also be suitable for
use in such a paper:
-
A book like Caroline
Spurgeon's Shakespeare's
Imagery
-
A print article like
Julian Markell's "'King
Lear,' Revolution, and the New Historicism" taken
from the Spring 1991 issue of Modern Language Studies,
available bound in the library
-
An electronic article
like Jeffrey Stern's "King
Lear: The Transference of the Kingdom," from
the Autumn 1990 issue of Shakespeare Quarterly accessed
via a database like JSTOR or Infotrac
-
An article from a
specialized reference resource like the specialized encyclopedia,
Shakespeare: From A to Z or Metzger and Coogan's
The Oxford Companion to the Bible
The following would be educational
resources suitable for studying purposes or understanding
the text more fully on a first read. Howevere, they
would not be used in
an actual research paper for that class:
-
A handout that your
teacher passed out in class, such as this one
-
An abstract appearing
at the beginning of an article summarizing its contents
-
Homer Watt's Outlines
of Shakespeare's Plays: Synopses, Background Material,
and Genealogical Charts from the College Outline
Series
-
Masterplots or other
summaries of the play
-
A Wikipedia article
about King Lear or William Shakespeare
-
An educational webpage
posted by a college instructor primarily for student
use.
-
Cliffs Notes:
King Lear (or Sparknotes: King Lear)
-
A review of a production
of King Lear performed in Chicago last year
-
The Zondervan
Teen Study Bible or God's Game Plan: The Bible for Athletes
Student researchers should
keep in mind two rules. First, all literature
papers in college-level classes must use quotations
or citations from primary sources as evidence, and most
of these classes also require
secondary sources as supplementary evidence. Second, students
should not cite mere educational resources in
their research papers. Educational materials are only used
for study and
understanding the gist of a subject--not for writing advanced
research papers. Citing them in an actual paper is considered
amateurish and high-schoolish.
|
|