The sources of information are instruments for the knowledge, access and search of information. Its main objective is to search, fix and disseminate the source of the implicit information on any physical medium. It is a term that over time has become very important, especially with the advent of computing.
The sources of information can be classified according to the different perspectives, however each author can elaborate their own classification, one of them is the following:
According to the degree of information they provide: primary, secondary and tertiary.
According to the type of information they contain: general and specialized.
According to the format or support: textual or audiovisual.
According to the channel used: documentary or oral.
By geographic coverage: national, international, regional and local.
Information sources have the particularity of not being exclusive, but can be combined, since a source can be primary and at the same time specialized and with digital support.
One of the criteria most used by the authors to classify the sources of information is the following:
Primary sources: they are those that contain original information, that is, they contain original data of the information and that do not need to be completed with another source. Among them are theses, monographs, magazines, newspapers, official documents of public institutions.
Secondary sources: are those whose main purpose is not to provide information, but to indicate which document or source can provide it by referring to original primary documents. Secondary sources are texts based on primary sources, and involve synthesis, analysis, and interpretation. Some of them are: directories, catalogs, bibliographies, etc.
Tertiary sources: this term is not widely used today; These are secondary sources that have been merged with others, such as catalogs and bibliographies of bibliographies. Its content is taken from other secondary sources.
The information sources are of great relevance since through them the required information can be obtained; without them people would not be able to transmit their knowledge or information to others. Without the sources, individuals would not have knowledge of anything, since the origin of the information comes from them.
