{"id":153,"date":"2013-08-28T12:38:27","date_gmt":"2013-08-27T23:38:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.massey.ac.nz\/thelighthouse\/?p=153"},"modified":"2014-06-11T16:03:59","modified_gmt":"2014-06-11T03:03:59","slug":"secondary-sources","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.massey.ac.nz\/thelighthouse\/2013\/08\/28\/secondary-sources\/","title":{"rendered":"Secondary sources"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-154  aligncenter\" title=\"Secondary and primary sources\" alt=\"Secondary and primary sources\" src=\"http:\/\/sites.massey.ac.nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/54\/2013\/08\/secondary-source-300x168.png\" width=\"300\" height=\"168\" srcset=\"https:\/\/sites.massey.ac.nz\/thelighthouse\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/54\/2013\/08\/secondary-source-300x168.png 300w, https:\/\/sites.massey.ac.nz\/thelighthouse\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/54\/2013\/08\/secondary-source-100x56.png 100w, https:\/\/sites.massey.ac.nz\/thelighthouse\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/54\/2013\/08\/secondary-source.png 453w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>A book I&#8217;m reading has a great quote from a different source that I&#8217;d like to use. How do I reference that?<\/p>\n<p>This is one of the most common referencing questions we hear. Fortunately, there&#8217;s a simple solution in all the common referencing styles (APA, MLA, Chicago).<!--more--><\/p>\n<h3>The situation<\/h3>\n<p>Here&#8217;s the situation: you&#8217;re reading a book or journal article, and it quotes or cites another source. It has a citation, and the other source is listed in the reference list of the book \/ article.<\/p>\n<p>You want to use this source, but who do you cite? The original author? The author that&#8217;s quoting them? Both authors?<\/p>\n<p>First, some terminology:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The &#8220;outside&#8221; source, the quot<span style=\"text-decoration: underline\">ing<\/span> source, is called the <strong>secondary source<\/strong>. In the picture at the top of this post, the secondary source is coloured black.<\/li>\n<li>The &#8220;inside&#8221; source, the quot<span style=\"text-decoration: underline\">ed<\/span> source, is called the <strong>primary source<\/strong>. In the picture, the primary source is coloured gold.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The primary source here is short &#8211; just a quotation, brief excerpt, or paraphrase. If the whole primary source is reproduced, it&#8217;s not a secondary source situation. Instead, it may be a chapter in an edited book, a republished work, or something similar.<\/p>\n<h3>Solution 1: Find the original<\/h3>\n<p>The best solution is to track down the original source. Most style guides recommend this, because you should always aim for the highest quality of sources. There&#8217;s always a possibility that the quoting author misunderstood or is misrepresenting the original. The context of the quotation could change its meaning. Finding the original sidesteps these problems.<\/p>\n<p>The bibliographic details should be listed in the secondary source&#8217;s reference list. Google, Google <a href=\"http:\/\/books.google.co.nz\/\">Books<\/a> or <a href=\"http:\/\/scholar.google.co.nz\/\">Scholar<\/a>, or the library&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.massey.ac.nz\/massey\/research\/library\/find-information\/article-databases\/article-databases_home.cfm\">article databases<\/a> can help you to find the source. See these guides on the Massey Library website:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.massey.ac.nz\/massey\/research\/library\/help-and-instruction\/how-to-find\/books\/title-and-author.cfm\">Finding <strong>books<\/strong> when you know the title or author<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.massey.ac.nz\/massey\/research\/library\/help-and-instruction\/how-to-find\/journal-articles\/title.cfm\">Find a <strong>journal<\/strong> article when you have the title<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.massey.ac.nz\/massey\/research\/library\/help-and-instruction\/how-to-find\/newspaper-articles\/title.cfm\">Find a <strong>newspaper<\/strong> article when you have the title<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>Solution 2: Secondary source citation<\/h3>\n<p>Sometimes, it&#8217;s just not possible to find the original. It might be out of print, not indexed online, or only available in the Scott Base Antarctic Research Library! If that&#8217;s the case, most referencing styles have a method to cite a secondary source.<\/p>\n<p>In APA, both sources are cited in-text, with &#8220;as cited in&#8221; between them. The primary source comes first. It can be mentioned in the body of your writing:<\/p>\n<div style=\"margin: 5px;border: 1px solid #bfd2e1;background-color: #f2f6f9\">\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;padding-right: 30px\">The research conducted by Jones (as cited in Smith, 2012) demonstrated the&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Or it can go inside brackets:<\/p>\n<div style=\"margin: 5px;border: 1px solid #bfd2e1;background-color: #f2f6f9\">\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;padding-right: 30px\">The results (Jones, 2006, as cited in Smith, 2012) confirmed that&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>The primary source (the &#8220;inside&#8221; quoted source) is <span style=\"text-decoration: underline\">not<\/span> mentioned in the reference list. You haven&#8217;t seen that source yourself, so it only appears in the in-text citation. The secondary source is listed in the reference list, without mentioning the primary source at all.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_162\" style=\"width: 463px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-162\" class=\"size-full wp-image-162 \" alt=\"Secondary sources in APA\" src=\"http:\/\/sites.massey.ac.nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/54\/2013\/08\/secondary-source-2.png\" width=\"453\" height=\"378\" srcset=\"https:\/\/sites.massey.ac.nz\/thelighthouse\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/54\/2013\/08\/secondary-source-2.png 453w, https:\/\/sites.massey.ac.nz\/thelighthouse\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/54\/2013\/08\/secondary-source-2-300x250.png 300w, https:\/\/sites.massey.ac.nz\/thelighthouse\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/54\/2013\/08\/secondary-source-2-100x83.png 100w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 453px) 100vw, 453px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-162\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Secondary sources in APA<\/p><\/div>\n<p>MLA uses different language (&#8220;qtd. in&#8221; rather than &#8220;as cited in&#8221;) but otherwise uses the same approach.<\/p>\n<p>Chicago style uses &#8220;quoted in&#8221; but the bibliographic details of both sources are listed in the footnote. See 14.273 of the Chicago Manual for the specifics.<\/p>\n<h3>Complications<\/h3>\n<p>Sometimes the secondary source cites several different primary sources at the same time:<\/p>\n<div style=\"margin: 5px;border: 1px solid #bfd2e1;background-color: #f2f6f9\">\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;padding-right: 30px\">The findings of Jones (2006), Merriweather (2007), and Tare (2004) also show that&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>The APA method would look very cluttered in this circumstance:<\/p>\n<div style=\"margin: 5px;border: 1px solid #bfd2e1;background-color: #f2f6f9\">\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;padding-right: 30px\">(Jones, 2006, as cited in Smith, 2012; Merriweather, 2007, as cited in Smith, 2012; Tare, 2004, as cited in Smith, 2012)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>The best option here is to move the primary authors outside the brackets, and describe them collectively rather than individually:<\/p>\n<div style=\"margin: 5px;border: 1px solid #bfd2e1;background-color: #f2f6f9\">\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;padding-right: 30px\">Several researchers (as cited in Smith, 2012) have confirmed&#8230;<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;padding-right: 30px\">Smith (2012) cites several pieces of research that verify the findings&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Used in the correct circumstances, secondary sources are a powerful tool in your referencing toolkit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A book I&#8217;m reading has a great quote from a different source that I&#8217;d like to use. How do I reference that? This is one of the most common referencing questions we hear. Fortunately, there&#8217;s a simple solution in all the common referencing styles (APA, MLA, Chicago).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":89,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-referencing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.massey.ac.nz\/thelighthouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.massey.ac.nz\/thelighthouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.massey.ac.nz\/thelighthouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.massey.ac.nz\/thelighthouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/89"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.massey.ac.nz\/thelighthouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153"}],"version-history":[{"count":24,"href":"https:\/\/sites.massey.ac.nz\/thelighthouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":308,"href":"https:\/\/sites.massey.ac.nz\/thelighthouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153\/revisions\/308"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.massey.ac.nz\/thelighthouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.massey.ac.nz\/thelighthouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.massey.ac.nz\/thelighthouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}