Editing Primary source

A '''primary source''' is a document, recording, artefact, or other evidence created close in time to the events it describes—letters, official records, photographs, datasets, contemporaneous news, or archived web captures—rather than later interpretation.

==Vs secondary and tertiary==
* '''Primary''' — evidence from the period (e.g. a 1998 homepage in the [[Wayback Machine]])
* '''Secondary''' — analysis that cites and interprets primary material
* '''Tertiary''' — digests such as encyclopedias that summarise secondary literature

==Digital caveats==
Born-digital primaries can be altered without obvious traces unless [[Checksum|fixity]] and provenance are recorded. Archived copies ([[Web archiving]]) are often the best available primary view of vanished pages, with the caveat that crawls are incomplete and may omit scripts or logins.

==See also==
* [[Citation]]
* [[Archive]]
* [[Internet Archive]]

==Sources==
* Standard historiography and library guides on source types.
* Rewritten for Foreverpedia practice notes.

[[Category:Sources]]
[[Category:Concepts]]