Page 76 - DLIS407_INFORMATION AND LITERATURE SURVEY IN SOCIAL SCIENCES

Unit 10: Role of Primary, Secondary and Tertiary Documents in the Growth and Development of Social Science

Notes

Did u Know? Why conference papers are prepared?
The conference papers are presented by specialists in different fields and
contain a new concept or solution to problems.

10.1.2 Secondary Sources

There are certain well known sources providing information on information sources. The Principal
one's are : bibliographics, indexing and abstracting publication, serial publications, encyclopedias
and dictionaries, handbooks, guides and manuals etc. Some of these are categorised as secondary
sources and other like guides, handbooks etc. as tertiary sources. All these sources are of fundamental
importance as information resources.
With the growth of literature, bibliographical tools and other secondary services in different soucial
sciences disciplines have multiplied. There are over 1000 indexing and abstracting services worldwide
in this field. Such services produced from western countries are quite good and comprehensive in
coverage. However Gorman and Mills (1992) have enumerated only 123 title in their publication,
Indexing and Abstracting Services in the Third World.
Secondary sources contain second-hand information that has already appeared in primary documents.
The information in them, is reviewed, rearranged and presented in a systematic order according to
the requirements of the users.
They can be categorized as under:
1. Conventional Secondary Sources
2. Non-Conventional Secondary Sources
The following are the key types of conventional and non conventional primary sources:

Indexing Periodicals

An indexing periodical is regarded as an important secondary source of information

Abstracting Periodicals

Abstracting periodicals cover a large number of periodicals on the subject and its related fields,
irrespective of languages.

Reviews of Progress

Reviews of progress are a summery of the developments of a subject, over a given period, prepared
by a specialist in the subject.

Monographs

A research monograph may be defined as “separately published reports on original research that are
too long, too specialized, or otherwise unsuitable for publication in one of the standard journals. Each

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