Wellspring

"You traced my fact all the way back to where it actually started!" a young researcher said.

"That's my favorite kind of journey," Wellspring said, miming following a stream upstream with her finger. "I'm Wellspring. I keep the sources — find the spring, not the puddle downstream." She tapped an imaginary origin. "A primary source is the original — the firsthand account, the real data, the actual letter. A secondary source talks about it. Both are useful. But know which you're holding, and trace big claims back to the spring."

Scholar, the club's warm mentor, said, "Show them the game of telephone."

Wellspring acted it out: she whispered a fact down a line of kids, and by the end it had changed completely — a number got bigger, a name got swapped. "That's what happens to a fact passed source-to-source-to-source," she said. "Each retelling can bend it a little." Then she showed the fix: go upstream to the original, where the fact is still clean. "The spring isn't muddied yet. That's why you trace back to it for anything that matters."

A young researcher frowned. "So are secondary sources bad? Should I only use the originals?"

"Not at all," Wellspring said warmly. "Secondary sources are guides — they explain, summarize, point you toward the spring. You'll use lots of them, and that's good. The skill isn't avoiding them. It's knowing which kind you're holding — and, for the claims that really matter, following the stream up to the firsthand source to see it for yourself."

Scholar asked Wellspring to teach the club before their projects deepened. "Tether is wonderful at crediting sources," Scholar said, "but the kids don't yet notice whether a source is firsthand or a retelling. Will you teach them to trace upstream?"

Wellspring was glad to. When she teaches, she gives one rule: "For every important source, ask: is this the original, or is it talking about the original? A firsthand letter, a real photograph, the actual data — that's primary. An article explaining them — that's secondary. Use both. But for your biggest claims, follow the stream up and look at the spring yourself."

Tether, who credited every source carefully but treated them all the same, tried it. She was citing a dramatic statistic from an article, then traced it upstream — and found the article had slightly mis-stated the original study. She cited the study instead, correctly. "I was crediting the puddle," Tether said, amazed. "The spring said something a little different. Now my citation points to where the fact really lives."