-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: maps as primary sources]]
Date: Mon, 8 Sep 2003 15:05:54 -0400 (EDT)
From: Ken Grabach <[log in to unmask]>


------------------
The answers to a question like this are often more complex and
complicated
than the question itself!

I would compare maps as primary sources to published government sources,
or news articles.  These two categories can be both primary and
secondary
at the same time.  Newspaper articles are primary sources to the extent
they describe original voices in describing an event, let's say a
personal
account by a reporter of her experiences of September 11, 2001, in
downtown Manhattan.  A summary of those events, given in an accompanying
article or sidebar, or an analysis of events of the war in Iraq,
probably
would represent a secondary source.

Likewise, a government publication, depends on what it is and whose
voice
is being conveyed.  Statutes, court decisions, and the like are primary
sources of a government's law.  Something that summarizes, or provides
commentary on it, is a secondary source, because the law emanates from a
government body, and the discussion of it by someone else or someones
else
is not.  On the other hand, a commentary by a single individual or
organization would be a primary source of that person's or that body's
opinion.  A legislative committee's hearing published as a transcript is
a
primary source both for that committee's work, and of any of the
testimony
by witnesses before the committee.  A committee's reprint of additional
material intended to shed additional light on the matter dealt with in
the
hearing is secondary source.

The same has to apply with maps.  A map drawn by a surveyor, say
Benjamin
Banneker or George Washington, or Mason and Dixon, would be a primary
source of that person or pair of persons.  A published map based on
their
surveys, but not compiled by them, would not be a primary source, at
all.

A map of world war II that was compiled by a noted leader during the war
would be a primary source of WWII history.  A National Geographic map
showing the theater of war during a year of the war would be a secondary
source, just as an article in an encyclopedia on WWII would be.

The question is not just the period of time that the map relates to, but
WHOSE voice does the item provide.  If you are not sure, and if the
voice
is diffused, as a map with named compilers, but not of something they
had
been involved in as participants, it is secondary, no matter how
contemporary it is.  Most published maps have to be secondary sources,
but
there are some instances when they are primary sources.

Ken
___________________________
Ken Grabach                           <[log in to unmask]>
Maps Librarian                         Phone: 513-529-1726
Miami University Libraries
Oxford, Ohio  45056  USA