Template:Secondary source

In historical scholarship, a secondary source is a work of history written as a synthetic account, usually based on primary sources and other secondary sources. Most scholarly historical monographs published today are secondary sources. Ideal secondary sources are usually characterized as both reporting events in the past as well as performing the function of generalization, analysis, synthesis, interpretation, and/or evaluation of the events. History text books used in schools are based on secondary sources and can be considered tertiary sources.

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Authorship

Secondary sources are often peer reviewed, and produced by institutions where methodological accuracy is important to the author's and publishing house's, or research institute's, reputation. Historians subject both primary and secondary sources to a high level of scrutiny.

Many scholars have commented on the difficulty in producing secondary source narratives from the "raw data" which makes up the past. Historian/philosopher Hayden White has written extensively on the ways in which the rhetorical strategies by which historians construct narratives about the past, and what sorts of assumptions about time, history, and events are embedded in the very structure of the historical narrative. In any case, the question of the exact relation between "historical facts" and the content of "written history" has been a topic of discussion among historians since at least the nineteenth century, when much of the modern profession of history came into being.

As a general rule, modern historians prefer to go back to primary sources, if available, as well as seeking new ones, because primary sources, whether accurate or not, offer new input into historical questions, and most modern history revolves around heavy use of archives for the purpose of finding useful primary sources. On the other hand, most undergraduate research projects are limited to secondary source material.

Secondary sources in family history

"A secondary source is a record or statement of an event or circumstance made by a non-eyewitness or by someone not closely connected with the event or circumstances, recorded or stated verbally either at or sometime after the event, or by an eye-witness at a time after the event when the fallibility of memory is an important factor."

Secondary sources in law

Secondary sources are often used in common law, to allow judges to determine what is actually meant by the language of a particular statute. See legislative intent.

See also

• Source text
• Tertiary source

References

• Jules R. Benjamin. A Student's Guide to History (2003)
• Edward H. Carr, What is History? (New York: Vintage Books, 1961).
• Wood Gray, Historian's handbook, a key to the study and writing of history (Houghton Mifflin, 1964).
• Derek Harland, A Basic Course in Genealogy: Volume two, Research Procedure and Evaluation of Evidence, (Bookcraft Inc, 1958)
• Martha C. Howell and Walter Prevenier. From Reliable Sources: An Introduction to Historical Methods (2001)
• Richard A. Marius and Melvin E. Page. A Short Guide to Writing About History (5th Edition) (2004)
• Hayden White, Metahistory: the historical imagination in nineteenth-century Europe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973).

Further reading

• Primary and secondary sources