Assignment on March 4th, 2008

1. Name some types of primary, secondary, and tertiary sources that are used by researchers in your field.

Field: Computer Engineering

Primary source: the original publication of new data, results, and theories; or, own first-hand result, such as simulation result, the output of a program.

Secondary source: interpretation, commentary, analysis and criticism of primary sources; examples include the validation or disapproval of a new theory.

Tertiary source: bibliographies, library catalogs, directories, and survey articles; particularly, a good survey article will give a comprehensive coverage of a particular field and list the most important publications in the field.


2. When you research a topic, how do you keep track of information
In scientific fields, Computer Engineering in particular, the main method to keep track of information is to build a bibliography which consists of all the citations the researcher once used in technical writing. Each item in the bibliography includes the authors, publication name, the original place, published time (year, month), and abstract.