17 April 2013

Original or Derivative Records? Primary, Secondary or Tertiary Sources? What genealogists need to know about records

Source: Eva the Weaver, http://www.flickr.com/photos/evaekeblad/8408332720/
Used under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic License, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/


Where we often used to talk about primary and secondary sources when discussing records, their provenance and their value, we now talk about whether documents are original or derivative and whether sources are primary, secondary or tertiary.

Understanding the types of records we use is critical to interpreting the information they provide us.  Was the information collected in real-time and from someone involved?  Was it collected later and something heard third-hand?

Natalie D. Cottrill has an excellent article at ProGenealogists, What Every Genealogist Should Know ... About Original and Derivative Records and Primary, Secondary and Tertiary Sources of Information, where she discusses this topic in great detail and with examples.

REMEMBER -- Not all records are created equal! 

Some additional resources on this topic:





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1 comment:

  1. The featured article refers to sources as primary and secondary. However, sources are original or derivative and information is primary or secondary.

    ReplyDelete