一手资料与二手资料：如何区分

• 给问题命名。 “报纸如何描述 1918 年流感？”与“历史学家现在主张 1918 年流感的成因是什么？”会把同一份剪报分到两种不同位置。
• 一手。 针对那个问题的直接证据：当事人或目击者的记录、原创作品、原始数据，或报告新结果的经验性文章。
• 二手。 对这些材料的事后分析、综合或论证——一部专著、一篇综述、教科书的一章、一位历史学家的解释。
• 三手。 为定向而汇编的一手与二手工作：百科全书、手册、大多数维基百科条目。
• 卡住时。 把问题改一个分句。若类别翻转，这份资料从来就不是“本质上”只有一种类型。

Primary sources are the raw materials of history — original documents and objects which were created at the time under study. They are different from secondary sources, accounts that retell, analyze, or interpret events, usually at a distance of time or place.

A primary source is a first-hand record of an event or topic created by a participant in or a witness to that event or topic.

A secondary source is second-hand information written or created after an event. Secondary sources may summarize, interpret, review, or criticize existing events or works.

LOC 的官方对照：

An original painting by Mary Cassatt / a book about the artist Mary Cassatt. President Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address / an article about Abraham Lincoln. A photograph of Harry Houdini / a website about Houdini’s magic tricks. An original Gershwin musical score / a recent recording of Gershwin songs.

What constitutes a useful and reliable source will vary according to both your assignment and the methods used in a particular field of study. As you approach a paper in an unfamiliar field, it will be important to remember that within each field of study, scholars distinguish between primary sources, or the raw material that they analyze as they attempt to answer a question, and secondary sources, or the analyses of that raw material done by other scholars in the field.

Primary sources provide firsthand testimony or direct evidence concerning a topic or question under investigation.

They are usually created by witnesses or recorders who experienced the events or conditions being documented. Often these sources are created at the time when the events or conditions are occurring, but primary sources can also include artwork, autobiographies, memoirs, and oral histories recorded later.

Primary sources are materials in a variety of formats that serve as original evidence documenting a time period, an event, a work, people, or ideas.

However, you should be aware that there's nothing inherent in a source that makes it primary or secondary. Instead, its category depends on how you treat it, which in turn depends on your research question.

Black Reconstruction in America, written in 1935 by W.E.B. Du Bois, could be used as a secondary source for research about 19th-century America, since Du Bois draws on a range of government reports, biographies, and existing historical narratives in order to make a claim about the past. However, it could also be used as a primary source for research about Du Bois’s life or black intellectual culture during the 1930s.

Like books, serials can function both as primary sources and secondary sources depending on how one approaches them.

For instance, an article on slavery in a recent issue of the Journal of Southern History should be read as a secondary source, as a scholar’s attempt to interpret primary source materials such as ledgers, diaries, or government documents in order to write an account of the past. An article on slavery published in the Journal of Southern History in 1935, however, can be read not only as a secondary source on slavery but also—and perhaps more appropriately—as a primary source that reveals how scholars in the 1930s interpreted slavery.

一份报纸：

2001 年 9 月 12 日的 The New York Times 就美国报纸次日清晨如何报道袭击而言是一手。同一期若被你当作记者对本可用法庭记录、航班数据或官方调查来记录的事件的事后重建，则是二手。

一部传记：

一部林肯传对林肯是二手。若你研究后来某个十年如何刻画他，它就是一手。

一篇综述：

一篇关于 mRNA 疫苗的现行文献综述对疫苗是二手。若你研究该领域在出版当年把什么当作已成定论，它就是一手。

文学

For example, for literary scholars, primary sources include fiction and poetry, while secondary sources include criticism written by other scholars about those literary texts.

历史学

Historians, on the other hand, grapple with primary sources such as letters, diaries, and eyewitness accounts produced at the time of an event, as well as with secondary sources such as arguments presented by other historians.

社会学

Sociologists tend to rely for raw material on quantitative data, such as surveys, censuses, and other statistics, or qualitative data, such as observation and interviews.

心理学与经济学

Social scientists in some fields, such as psychology and economics, also consider empirical journal articles (articles that describe the results of original research) published in peer-reviewed journals to be primary sources.

人类学与历史学文章

Social scientists in other fields, such as anthropology and history, however, do not consider research articles primary sources because articles in these fields do not typically present raw data.

自然科学

Natural scientists consider empirical articles published in peer-reviewed journals to be primary sources.

科学中的二手资料

Secondary sources in the natural sciences include literature reviews and books.

Primary sources are the main text or work that you are discussing (e.g. a sonnet by William Shakespeare; an opera by Mozart); actual data or research results (e.g. a scientific article presenting original findings; statistics); or historical documents (e.g. letters, pamphlets, political tracts, manifestoes).

A single primary source may be found in a variety of formats. For example, the original of a handwritten letter by George Washington might be available to researchers at the Library of Congress, but a copy of that letter might be available elsewhere as microfilm, in a published collection of documents, or in electronic form online.

Born-digital materials start out in a digital form, like CDs or a website. Digitized materials are those that have been photographed or scanned to create a digital copy, like a PDF of a letter from an archive or a picture of a painting from a museum.

Although usually secondary sources, dissertations can themselves be primary sources or can be extremely helpful in identifying and locating primary sources.

Dissertations that function as primary sources might be edited versions of texts, or a doctoral thesis could be used to analyze the influence of a professor on a generation of graduate students and, by extension, on the teaching and writing in a discipline over a period of time.

这本书：

Du Bois, W. E. B. Black Reconstruction: An Essay Toward a History of the Part Which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America, 1860-1880. Harcourt, Brace, 1935.

作为二手用于：

重建时期发生了什么，以及 1860 年代至 1880 年代的政府报告显示了什么。你在借用 Du Bois 的解释。

作为一手用于：

一位 1935 年的黑人知识人如何对抗 Dunning School 重写重建。此时 1935 年的论证就是证据。

一手（实验／模型）：

Watson, J. D., and F. H. C. Crick. "Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid." Nature 171, no. 4356 (25 April 1953): 737–738. https://doi.org/10.1038/171737a0.

二手（事后解释）：

Olby, Robert. The Path to the Double Helix. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1974.

三手（仅供定向）：

概括 1953 年论文的百科全书或维基百科条目。用它找 DOI 和后来的历史；不要把它当作结构的证据来引用。

一手：

十四行诗或歌剧本身。康奈尔的措辞："a sonnet by William Shakespeare; an opera by Mozart."

二手：

对该作品的批评。分析与文本隔着一步。

该条目：

Gardner, Alexander, photographer. Antietam, Md. President Lincoln with Gen. George B. McClellan and group of officers. 3 October 1862. Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2018666256/.

作为一手用于：

那一群人当时的样子、如何被摆姿势，以及战时摄影师在 1862 年 10 月 3 日如何框取林肯。

作为二手，若：

你把后来的图说或网站文字当作战役本身的证据。照片不能替代战后报告。

对 1854 年是一手：

病例在何处聚集，以及当时的调查者如何画出这场疫情。

对后来的科学史是一手：

十九世纪中叶观察者如何论证疾病是社会问题与空间问题。

作为二手，若：

现代教科书重绘 Snow 的地图来教流行病学。课本身引用教科书；若主张关乎 1854 年，则引用有文献依据的 Snow 复制件。

Tertiary sources are publications that summarize and digest the information in primary and secondary sources to provide background on a topic, idea, or event.

Encyclopedias and biographical dictionaries are good examples of tertiary sources.

• 用它来学习一场辩论的标准名称、找 DOI，或看人人都引用哪部专著。
• 不要把它当作证据引用来证明事件发生过，或某项研究得出了某个结果。引用百科全书所用的一手或二手资料。
• 只有在作业就是关于这部工具书本身时才引用它——例如，一篇关于维基百科如何框定争议的论文。

一手——官方海报：

J. Howard Miller, We Can Do It!, ca. 1942–1943, War Production Board, National Archives Identifier 535413。NARA 的静态影像说明 记录 Westinghouse 委托这张海报供内部使用，它后来才与公共的 "Rosie the Riveter" 形象联系起来。

一手——人口普查：

Sixteenth Census of the United States, 1940。职业与产业表，以及 National Archives 的手稿调查表。

二手——后来的历史：

Alice Kessler-Harris, Out to Work: A History of Wage-Earning Women in the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982; 20th anniversary ed., 2003)。用它处理雇佣劳动的长论证；不要把它当成 1940 年代证词。

这组搭配做什么：

海报是战时职场宣传的证据，不是有多少女性进入工厂的证据。人口普查是申报职业的证据。Kessler-Harris 是一位劳动史家事后如何解释那些变化的证据。每份资料回答问题的不同分句。

When and where was it created?

Who created it?

For what purpose or audience was it produced?