[MUSIC] In this lesson we'll continue to look at the categories of different types of information, and then move on to looking at the kinds of information drawn on in different fields. In addition to the cultural and scholarly record, another useful way to distinguish between different types of information is primary, secondary, or tertiary sources. According to Schaub, McClure, and Bravender, primary sources are those that give us a primary account, that is first hand information of an event. Primary sources for a science experiment, for example, would be the data you collect in the experiment. For a history essay, you might be looking at a piece of pottery from this specific period. Or a diary of someone who lived during that period. What primary sources have in common is that the source comes from someone who was there, or at least very close to an event. Examples include journal articles in science related fields, autobiographies, correspondence like letters, emails, text messages. And also include things like works of arts, photographs, and musical compositions along with a whole range of other texts. The next category is secondary sources, which give us a secondary account. Secondary sources are a step removed compared to primary resources and are an interpretation, analysis, or overview of a particular event. Secondary sources are written with hindsight and might be an analysis of the significance of a piece of pottery or an interpretation of a diary entry. Examples include biographies, books, review articles and commentaries. Scholarly journal articles, dissertations and thesis, can also be secondary sources, particularly if they're discussing a primary source such as a book or speech. The last category tertiary sources give us an account that is twice removed. Tertiary sources draw upon and summarize primary and secondary sources. Examples include things like handbooks, dictionaries, encyclopedias, and textbooks. What is important to note here, is that depending on the field or particular question you're answering, different sources of information can fulfill different roles. If you are investigating how English words have changed over the past 300 years, dictionaries would become a primary source. Because they capture evidence from a particular time and place. Typically, at an undergraduate level, you shouldn't be relying solely on tertiary sources in you assignments. Though you may want to draw upon them to define terms or to get an overview of key concepts or events before you look at more detailed primary or secondary sources. So let's now look at what kind of information is used in different fields. Each field tends to deal with information differently. And this means that the kind of information you'll draw on in your work is different for each field. Here we'll look briefly at two main fields in academic study. The humanities and the sciences. And how they use different kinds of information and why. For humanities field like English Literature, Art History, Film Studies, and Music Studies etc. Academics usually study texts from the cultural record. For example literature, pieces of art, films and musical compositions. They then engage with work from the scholarly record to further understand, critique, and analyze the cultural or popular texts. At an undergraduate level, you will learn about theories in the field from secondary sources and this will give you a vocabulary to analyze the texts from different perspectives. The information types you're likely to come across in the humanities are primary and secondary. And you'll rarely refer to a textbook or tertiary source. For primary sources, you'll look at things like novels, poems, paintings, films, graphic novels, musical compositions, and more. In terms of secondary sources, you'll draw upon non-fiction books, scholarly journal articles, and reviews. On the other hand, the sciences such as physics, chemistry, math, biology, or agriculture, you'll typically be involved with experimentation, laboratory research, simulation, fieldwork, mechanical drawing, and solving problem sets. Study in these fields involves understanding key findings, theorems, and approaches and applying them to different kinds of problems. The information types you're likely to come across in the sciences are primary and secondary. For primary sources you'll be looking at things like lab notes, data sets, and also things like scholarly articles and conference proceedings. Note here that scholarly articles are classified as primary texts, whereas in the humanities fields they're considered secondary. This is because in science, the person who produced the results is usually the one who wrote the article. It's a first hand account of the results. Meaning it's a primary text. In humanities fields on the other hand, scholarly journal articles usually give an analysis or interpretation of a separate work by a different author. And this means they're secondary sources. Now, in the sciences the secondary sources you deal with include non-fiction books, textbooks, and science periodicals. So, in this lesson we've looked at three types of information that you'll encounter at university. Primary, secondary, and tertiary. We've also had a brief look at the different kinds of information used in the humanities and the sciences. To find out more about the different kinds of information that other fields specialize in, have a look at the document in our readings list called information types by field. [MUSIC]
