Which of the following are secondary sources? Select all that apply.

The Indian National Bibliography

An Indian Standard issued by BIS

Assertion (A): A citation index lets a searcher move forward in time from an older paper to later papers that cite it. Reason (R): A citation index records the references each indexed paper cites, so the older paper can be looked up as a cited item. Choose the correct option.

Both A and R are true, and R is the correct explanation of A

Both A and R are true, but R is not the correct explanation of A

Which body issues national standards in India?

Controller General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks

National Institute of Science Communication and Policy Research

Which of the following are tertiary sources in the syllabus's grouping? Select all that apply.

The CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics

A researcher asks a senior colleague at a conference which recent unpublished work she should read. In Grogan's terms the colleague is a:

Informal non-documentary source

Information Sources I: Nature, Characteristics, Types and Formats; Primary, Secondary and Tertiary, Documentary and Non-Documentary Sources; and Primary, Secondary and Tertiary Sources in Print and Electronic Form

Unit III is the reference librarian's toolkit: the kinds of sources information comes in and how to judge them. This chapter covers the first five items. It begins with the nature, characteristics, types and formats of information sources, sets out the standard division into primary, secondary and tertiary sources and into documentary and non-documentary ones, and then works through each level with its print and electronic forms: journals, conference proceedings, patents, standards, theses and trade literature as primary sources; dictionaries, encyclopaedias, bibliographies, indexing and abstracting services, statistical sources, handbooks and manuals as secondary ones; and directories, yearbooks and almanacs as tertiary ones. The next chapter takes reference sources by subject, electronic resources, databases and evaluation.

1. Nature, characteristics, types and formats of information sources

An information source is anything from which information can be obtained: a document, a person, an institution, a database or an object. Sources differ in their characteristics: authority (who produced it and with what expertise), accuracy, currency, scope and coverage, level (research, professional, popular), arrangement (alphabetical, classified, chronological), treatment (factual, analytical, critical), accessibility and cost. They also come in many formats: print (books, periodicals, pamphlets, maps), manuscript, microform (microfilm and microfiche), audio-visual (sound recordings, films, video), electronic (CD-ROM, online databases, e-books, e-journals, websites, data sets) and, increasingly, multimedia and social media. The same content can appear in several formats, so a librarian judges a source by its content and authority first and its format second.

ℹ️ Documents versus conventional and non-conventional documents

Ranganathan's classification of documents speaks of conventional documents (books, periodicals, maps), neo-conventional documents (standards, specifications, patents, data), non-conventional documents (microforms, audio-visual materials) and meta-documents (direct records of phenomena, such as photographs and recordings made by instruments). The term "grey literature" covers material not published through commercial channels: reports, theses, working papers, conference papers, government documents.

2. Primary, secondary and tertiary sources; documentary and non-documentary sources

Denis Grogan's widely used scheme divides documentary sources by how far they are from the original work. Primary sources report new knowledge or original data for the first time, unfiltered by others: research articles, patents, theses, conference papers, technical reports, standards, and, in history, original records. Secondary sources are compiled from primary sources; they organise, repackage, index, summarise or interpret them so that primary literature can be found and used: indexes and abstracts, bibliographies, encyclopaedias, dictionaries, reviews of progress, handbooks, textbooks and monographs. Tertiary sources help users find primary and secondary sources; they are the least concerned with subject knowledge itself: bibliographies of bibliographies, directories, yearbooks, guides to the literature and lists of research in progress. Non-documentary sources carry information without a formal document: formal ones such as research organisations, government departments, professional societies, information centres and consultants, and informal ones such as colleagues, conversations, invisible colleges and gatekeepers.

Level	Relation to original knowledge	Examples
Primary	First report of new work, uninterpreted	Journal articles, patents, standards, theses, conference papers, research reports, trade literature
Secondary	Compiled from primary sources; organises or digests them	Indexing and abstracting services, bibliographies, encyclopaedias, dictionaries, handbooks, textbooks, reviews
Tertiary	Guides to primary and secondary sources	Directories, yearbooks, almanacs, bibliographies of bibliographies, guides to reference sources

⚠️ The syllabus's own grouping differs slightly from Grogan's

Some textbooks put directories and yearbooks among secondary sources, and some put bibliographies among tertiary ones. The syllabus lists dictionaries, encyclopaedias, bibliographies, indexing and abstracting, statistical sources, handbooks and manuals as secondary, and directories, yearbooks and almanacs as tertiary, and a question on this paper will follow that grouping.

3. Primary sources in print and electronic form

Source	What it is	Points to remember
Journals	Periodicals publishing peer-reviewed research articles, letters and reviews	First: Journal des sçavans and Philosophical Transactions (1665); identified by ISSN; now mostly electronic, many open access; DOIs for articles
Conference proceedings	Papers presented at conferences, published as volumes or journal issues	Fast, often the first report in computing and engineering; grey literature when not formally published; indexed in conference proceedings citation indexes
Patents	A grant of exclusive rights to an invention for 20 years in exchange for public disclosure	Classified by the International Patent Classification (IPC); searched in the Indian Patent Office's database, Espacenet, WIPO PATENTSCOPE and Google Patents; much technical information appears only in patents
Standards	Documents that set agreed specifications, methods or terminology, made by consensus	International: ISO (1947), IEC, ITU; national: Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS Act 2016; earlier the Indian Standards Institution, 1947), ANSI, BSI; revised periodically, so edition matters
Theses and dissertations	Original research submitted for a degree	India: Shodhganga (INFLIBNET) holds full-text PhD theses under the UGC regulations; Shodhgangotri holds synopses; internationally NDLTD and ProQuest Dissertations and Theses
Trade literature	Material issued by firms about their products: catalogues, price lists, technical data sheets, manuals, house journals	Current, practical, free but hard to collect and quickly outdated; valuable in engineering and industry libraries

Two further primary sources are research and technical reports, issued by research organisations and government agencies to report projects (often with report numbers, such as those of NASA or national laboratories), and government publications such as gazettes, census reports and committee reports. In electronic form, primary sources now include preprints, data sets deposited in repositories, and dynamic publications that are updated after release.

4. Secondary sources in print and electronic form

Source	Purpose	Classic and current examples
Dictionaries	Words: meaning, spelling, pronunciation, etymology, usage; subject dictionaries for terms	Oxford English Dictionary (first edition completed 1928; now online), Webster's, Hindi Shabdasagar; subject dictionaries such as a dictionary of library science
Encyclopaedias	Summaries of knowledge on all subjects or one subject, with bibliographies	Encyclopaedia Britannica (first edition 1768-71; last print edition 2010, now online), Wikipedia (2001), subject encyclopaedias such as the Encyclopedia of Library and Information Sciences
Bibliographies	Lists of documents: universal, national, trade, subject, author	Indian National Bibliography (1958), British National Bibliography (1950), Books in Print, WorldCat as a de facto universal bibliography
Indexing and abstracting services	Point to journal articles and other items; abstracts summarise them	Index Medicus (1879; now MEDLINE), Chemical Abstracts (1907), Library and Information Science Abstracts (LISA, 1969), Indian Science Abstracts, Science Citation Index (from 1964), Scopus and Web of Science
Statistical sources	Numerical data on population, economy and society	Census of India, National Sample Survey reports, the Economic Survey, the Statistical Year Book India (MoSPI), UN Statistical Yearbook, World Bank data
Handbooks and manuals	Handbooks give compact data and facts in a field; manuals give instructions for doing something	CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics; style manuals such as the APA Publication Manual; equipment manuals

🧠 Index or abstract?

An index tells you where an article is (author, title, journal, volume, pages, subject headings); an abstract also tells you what it says. Both are secondary. A citation index adds a third thing: who cited whom, so you can search forwards in time from an older paper.

5. Tertiary sources in print and electronic form

Source	What it gives	Examples
Directories	Lists of persons or organisations with addresses and brief facts	The World of Learning (institutions), Ulrich's Periodicals Directory (serials), the Universities Handbook of the Association of Indian Universities, directories of libraries and of experts
Yearbooks	Annual review of events and current facts, often about countries and organisations	The Statesman's Yearbook (since 1864), the Europa World Year Book, India: A Reference Annual (Publications Division, since 1953), encyclopaedia yearbooks
Almanacs	Compendia of miscellaneous facts and statistics, originally calendars with astronomical data	Whitaker's Almanack (1868), The World Almanac and Book of Facts (1868), Manorama Year Book
Guides to the literature	Annotated lists of reference sources by subject	Guide to Reference (ALA; successor to Sheehy's Guide to Reference Books), Walford's Guide to Reference Material
Bibliographies of bibliographies	Lists of bibliographies	Theodore Besterman's A World Bibliography of Bibliographies; the Bibliographic Index

Electronic versions have changed tertiary sources more than any other kind: directories are now databases updated continuously, yearbooks have online editions, and web directories and subject gateways (next chapter) perform the guiding function of printed guides. The principle stays the same: a tertiary source does not answer the question; it tells you where the answer is likely to be found.

Key takeaways

Sources vary by authority, accuracy, currency, scope, level, arrangement and format (print, manuscript, microform, audio-visual, electronic); grey literature is not commercially published.
Grogan's scheme: primary sources report new work, secondary sources organise and digest primary ones, tertiary sources guide to both; non-documentary sources are formal (institutions) or informal (colleagues, invisible colleges).
Primary sources: journals (1665), conference proceedings, patents (20 years, IPC), standards (ISO, BIS), theses (Shodhganga) and trade literature.
Secondary sources: dictionaries (OED), encyclopaedias (Britannica, 1768-71), bibliographies (INB 1958, BNB 1950), indexing and abstracting services (Index Medicus 1879, Chemical Abstracts 1907, LISA 1969), statistical sources, handbooks and manuals.
Tertiary sources: directories (World of Learning, Ulrich's), yearbooks (Statesman's Yearbook 1864, India: A Reference Annual), almanacs (Whitaker's and World Almanac, both 1868), guides and bibliographies of bibliographies (Besterman).

Practice questions (10)

Attempt each one before opening the answer. Every explanation names the tempting wrong option as well as the right one, because that is where marks are lost.

Which of the following is a primary source of information?
1. An encyclopaedia
2. A patent specification
3. A directory of universities
4. An abstracting journal
Show answer
Answer: B — A patent specification
A patent discloses a new invention for the first time and is primary. An abstracting journal and an encyclopaedia are secondary sources compiled from primary literature, and a directory is a tertiary source.
Ulrich's Periodicals Directory is best classified, under the syllabus's grouping, as a:
1. Tertiary source
2. Primary source
3. Trade literature
4. Non-documentary source
Show answer
Answer: A — Tertiary source
Directories are tertiary sources: they guide users to periodicals rather than report or digest knowledge. Primary sources report new work, non-documentary sources are persons and institutions, and trade literature is issued by firms about their products.
For how many years from the date of filing does a patent normally give protection under the Patents Act 1970 and TRIPS? Type the number.
Numerical answer — type the value.
Show answer
Answer: 20
The term of a patent is 20 years from the date of filing the application, the minimum TRIPS requires and the term India has applied since the 2002 amendment.
Which of the following are secondary sources? Select all that apply.
1. The Indian National Bibliography
2. Chemical Abstracts
3. An Indian Standard issued by BIS
4. A doctoral thesis
Show answer
Answer: A — The Indian National Bibliography; B — Chemical Abstracts
Abstracting services and national bibliographies organise and point to primary literature, so they are secondary. A thesis reports original research and a standard sets new agreed specifications; both are primary.
Product catalogues, technical data sheets and price lists issued by manufacturers are known as:
1. Handbooks
2. Conference proceedings
3. Trade literature
4. Standards
Show answer
Answer: C — Trade literature
Trade literature is material issued by firms about their own products; it is current and practical but ephemeral. Standards are consensus specifications, handbooks compact data for a field, and proceedings the papers of a conference.
Assertion (A): A citation index lets a searcher move forward in time from an older paper to later papers that cite it. Reason (R): A citation index records the references each indexed paper cites, so the older paper can be looked up as a cited item. Choose the correct option.
1. Both A and R are true, and R is the correct explanation of A
2. Both A and R are true, but R is not the correct explanation of A
3. A is true, but R is false
4. A is false, but R is true
Show answer
Answer: A — Both A and R are true, and R is the correct explanation of A
Both are true and R explains A. Because the references of every indexed paper are recorded, a searcher can look up the older paper as a cited item and find all later papers that cite it, which subject indexes cannot do. Eugene Garfield proposed citation indexing in 1955.
Which body issues national standards in India?
1. Registrar General of India
2. Controller General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks
3. National Institute of Science Communication and Policy Research
4. Bureau of Indian Standards
Show answer
Answer: D — Bureau of Indian Standards
The Bureau of Indian Standards, now governed by the BIS Act 2016 and successor to the Indian Standards Institution (1947), formulates Indian Standards. NIScPR communicates science, the Controller General grants patents, and the Registrar General conducts the census.
Which of the following are tertiary sources in the syllabus's grouping? Select all that apply.
1. The World of Learning
2. The Statesman's Yearbook
3. Whitaker's Almanack
4. The CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics
Show answer
Answer: A — The World of Learning; B — The Statesman's Yearbook; C — Whitaker's Almanack
Yearbooks, almanacs and directories are listed as tertiary in the syllabus. Handbooks are listed with the secondary sources, because they compile data from primary literature.
In which year was Index Medicus, the forerunner of MEDLINE, first published? Type the year.
Numerical answer — type the value.
Show answer
Answer: 1879
John Shaw Billings started Index Medicus in 1879. Its computerised production through MEDLARS (1964) led to the online MEDLINE database (1971), searchable free through PubMed since 1996.
A researcher asks a senior colleague at a conference which recent unpublished work she should read. In Grogan's terms the colleague is a:
1. Formal non-documentary source
2. Tertiary documentary source
3. Primary documentary source
4. Informal non-documentary source
Show answer
Answer: D — Informal non-documentary source
A colleague consulted in conversation is an informal non-documentary source, part of the invisible college. Formal non-documentary sources are organisations such as research institutions and information centres, and documentary sources are recorded documents.