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Archiver > TMG > 2003-07 > 1057126817


From: "Stuart Armstrong" <>
Subject: Re: [TMG] Calculating Year of Birth
Date: Wed, 02 Jul 2003 00:20:17 -0600
References: <5.1.0.14.0.20030701164345.00a44c10@pop.sprynet.com>
In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.0.20030701164345.00a44c10@pop.sprynet.com>


On 7/1/03, at 17:11, Darrell A. Martin wrote:

>The reason why I rarely use such details in the Tag sentence is that I
>always quote the relevant text in my Citation Detail.

It is comforting to find someone who has the same philosophy.

>Citing the document *as a
>whole* for the birth of one John Buck is not much use. Providing the exact
>reference by page and paragraph is better, of course, but still requires
>the reader to get a look at the original -- or at least a transcription of
>part of it -- for real understanding. So besides the proper reference
>information, I put in the CD:
>
> in a list of Lord Feignworthy's tenants in
> 1653, "John Bukke age 58".

What I used to do was put the data in quotes if I chose to quote it directly, and in parentheses if I chose to abstract it. Now, I use a split CD to put the data at the end.

in a list of Lord Feignworthy's tenants in 1653. Data: John Bukke age 58.

To tell the truth, I sometimes like my earlier method better, especially for short quotations.

>I find that both for the reader *and* for myself, this aids a great deal in
>determining whether [the source] is being referred to in general
>terms, or whether it actually speaks directly to the specific conclusion.

And, it becomes a ready reference for re-evaluating my conclusions in the light of new data.

>The drawback to this approach is that one's citations can sometimes
>overwhelm the narrative. I find that an acceptable price to pay; others may
>not.

My citations definitely overwhelm the narrative. To me it is very acceptable, because I'm not producing a finished work but a research document. If I were to decide to publish it, I would edit the heck out of it anyhow or suppress citation details. But more likely it will get donated to a library someday when I'm unable to continue, so other researchers can see _all_ my research with the original data, and won't have to check the sources again. In fact, reading the footnotes without the narrative is actually more interesting.

I wish there were a way to collect ALL my citation details for any given source, and string them together. It would result in a complete log of everything I ever found in that source. I opened the citation file in a word processor and I could see all the citations, prefaced by strings of codes. It looks like if I could decipher the codes and sort them by source I would end up with just such a log. I'll bet a programmer could do it.

Stuart Armstrong
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web page: http://cgi.aros.net/~stuarta

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