Chapter 4: Types of Information
Learning Objectives
- Identify information resources as qualitative or quantitative and as primary, secondary, or tertiary.
- Differentiate between different types of sources, including scholarly, trade, popular, news, and sensational
- Choose appropriate formats of sources for your information needs
Information that involves a descriptive judgment that uses words instead of numbers. Some examples are gender, country of origin name, and emotional state.
Information that involves a measurable quantity. Examples are length, mass, temperature, and time.
Sources that provide second-hand information. That is, they are not the original information but are about the original information. For instance, such sources are not a novel (the original, first-hand information), but are such sources as a book review of the novel or promo copy that tells readers about the novel (both second-hand information about the first-hand information). Another example: an analysis (secondary source) of a piece of legislation (primary source) that appears in a newspaper. One last example: subsequent news coverage of an event (secondary source) after the initial reporting on the event (primary source) was published by the news outlet.
Sources that provide third-hand information. That is, they are not the original or primary source (say, a novel) and are not second-hand information (such as a book review of that novel), which is always about the original source and usually by someone other than the creator of the original source. Instead, tertiary sources abstract, compile, digest, or otherwise organize primary and secondary sources. Examples are dictionaries, encyclopedias, guides, and handbooks. Tertiary sources are those you usually wouldn’t read from beginning to end.
Sources that contain information involved in the scholarly conversation that takes place primarily among academics at conferences, presentations and in books, blogs, pre-prints, and journal articles.
Trade sources are written by practitioners (not scholars) in a field, for an audience of others who work in the same field.
Sources written for and able to be understood by the general public. Usually about news and entertainment, popular sources are written by staff writers and reporters and are published, after approval from an editor, by commercial publishers. Popular sources usually contain many advertisements and attractive artwork. They contain no footnotes or references at the end, although substantive popular sources, such as news stories and long form journalism, usually refer to sources in the body of articles.
News sources, such as newspapers and some broadcast media channels or shows, inform the general public about recent events.
Sensational sources, such as tabloids and clickbait articles, prioritize arousing an emotional response over objectivity. They are entertaining but not usually appropriate to use for research.
Feedback/Errata