My teachers were always clear that encyclopedias were not to be used as a primary source either. They're not even a secondary source. Encyclopedias are tertiary

My teachers were always clear that encyclopedias were not to be used as a primary source either. They're not even a secondary source. Encyclopedias are tertiary sources. They're better than Wikipedia... but only barely. In the end you use Wikipedia and an encyclopedia the same way: to get a broad understanding of a topic as a mental framework, then look at the article's citations as a starting point to find actual, citable primary sources. (Plus the rest of the library's catalog/databases.)