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Archiver > TMG > 2006-07 > 1151795234


From: "Excalibur131" <>
Subject: Re: [TMG] source output form
Date: Sat, 1 Jul 2006 19:07:14 -0400
References: <LPBBJNIOBJEJOGJFMDGJGEMLLMAB.ddburghart@cox.net>


Applause!!! <Clap><Clap><Clap><Clap><Clap><Clap>

Well said, DeAnna. If I may add a thought. Placement of all source
information (the actual words found in a book) in the Citation Detail seems
to me to go well beyond the intended scope. I have well over 100 books, plus
census images, wills, deeds, surveys, letters, processions, court documents,
estate records, pictures, etc. IF I record the date and place of marriage,
am I remiss when I don't record all the details of that marriage in the
citation? I would rather spend my time doing research than copying details
from those records to the Citation Detail. If a person would like to see
what was actually said in a document they are free to go to the library, buy
a book, visit a court house, etc., but please don't saddle me down with
endless typing of information -- the reader would be well served to see the
sources themselves.

Tom
Royalty to Rogues
http://www.l-dunaway.net/
----- Original Message -----
From: "DeAnna Burghart" <>
To: <>
Sent: Saturday, July 01, 2006 5:36 PM
Subject: RE: [TMG] source output form


> On June 29 (what can I say -- I'm behind this week), Lee wrote:
>>>The problem is when a reader finds their interpretation of a document is
> different from yours and they are viewing the exact same document that you
> referenced. If they see a different copy and the data is seen
> differently,
> they would put the difference to the different copies. But if they see
> the
> same copy and read it differently (assuming the resolution is reasonable)
> then they may just disregard the rest of your data as unreliable.<<
>
>
> And this, if I may be permitted a brief tirade, is where I think we may
> have
> gotten our priorities skewed a bit in the effort to prove ourselves as a
> science. Some of the citation models proposed these days are beginning to
> approach outrageous. Why in the world do I need a full paragraph to
> properly
> cite a census record viewed online in order to corroborate the reported
> birthdate of a 2nd-degree cousin who will receive half a sentence in a
> journal report? And heaven forfend that I should omit some critical detail
> like the date I viewed the record (it might have been updated since
> then!!)
> or the line number (what if they look at the OTHER Brown family on that
> page?!!) or the fact that a subscription was required to view it.
>
> It's one thing to properly report a source: It's on the 1910 Federal
> census,
> NARA microfilm number blah, page X, family/dwelling Y. Oh, and by the way
> I
> looked at Ancestry's digital copy of it. (Even that much is redundant --
> do
> we imagine that Ancestry has a non-digital copy?)
>
> The trap we're too often falling into these days is something else
> entirely,
> and it all seems to revolve around paranoia that people might think us not
> very astute researchers, readers, or genealogists if they interpret
> something differently than we do.
>
> The fact of the matter is, though, that genealogy is largely
> interpretation.
> Even the facts rarely tell us the truth -- we have to use our own brains
> for
> that. It's puzzle-solving, which is where the fun comes in, at least for
> me.
> And it's quite likely that if you gave all the genealogists in the world
> the
> same census copies -- cited or not -- we'd end up looking like Truman's
> famous line of economists.
>
> "...if they see the same copy and read it differently (assuming the
> resolution is reasonable) then they may just disregard the rest of your
> data
> as unreliable." They might. And perhaps they'd be entitled to that
> opinion.
> Maybe I'm really not very good at this. So be it. Or perhaps they would be
> making a rush to judgment -- do we throw out the information in entire
> county histories because the author or editor botched a generation or a
> birthdate? I don't. I simply redouble my efforts to validate the
> information
> before accepting it as gospel -- something we should be doing anyway.
>
> If one is submitting to a genealogical magazine -- or any scholarly
> publication -- then it makes sense to follow their standards. I observe,
> however, that even the NGS Quarterly usually opts for much simpler
> notations. In Volume 93, No. 2, June 2005, for instance, I note the
> following:
>
> * Footnote 16, p. 91 -- FHL microfilm number, no mention of Salt Lake City
> repository.
>
> * Footnote 16, p.96-7 -- an incidental remark that a source is "online at
> <url>" -- there is nothing further about dates accessed or website
> authors.
>
> * Footnote 20, p. 97 -- 1880 census index -- accessed online via Family
> Search ... again, no concerns over posting dates accessed.
>
> * Footnote 37, p. 100 -- census image "viewed at
> http://www.heritagequestonline.com";
>
> I could continue in the same vein. There are a few footnotes that contain
> the (in my opinion extraneous) details like NARA microfilms being
> warehoused
> in Washington D.C. or FHL microfilms being vaulted in Salt Lake City, but
> the vast majority are edited for the brevity illustrated above -- they
> provide the information required to find the evidence. I couldn't access
> heritagequestonline offline. I would expect that an FHL microfilm is
> available through the FHL and that an NARA record is likewise available
> through the archives. Ancestry is what it is, and I'm not likely to worry
> much over whether an image has been updated if I go to double-check
> something -- either I'll see the same thing, or I'll see something
> different
> (in which case I'll discuss my disagreement with the original author in my
> *own* footnote in my *own* report). I can only assume from the plethora of
> far more readable footnotes in publications like NGS Quarterly that these
> more abbreviated forms are perfectly acceptable even to sourcing doyen
> Elizabeth Mills herself, and that we could thus be just as easily served
> by
>
> Leung Tung Wong household, 1880 U.S. census, Hampden Co., Mass., pop.
> sch.,
> Ward 7 Holyoke, p. 24 (stamped p. 347A), dw. 169, fam. 208, NA microfilm
> T9,
> roll 535; viewed at http://www.ancestry.com.
>
> ... or any one of a dozen variations of that. Who among us would be unable
> to find and examine the proper record with that citation (which is modeled
> directly after my Footnote 37 reference above, abbreviations and all)?
>
> TMG gives us extraordinary power and flexibility in our sourcing
> capabilities, for which I'm tremendously grateful. But with great power
> comes great responsibility. ;P When I found myself obsessing over making
> sure that the *line* numbers of my census citations had changed
> appropriately for each fact that I was citing from the census reading, I
> began to realize that things had gone too far.
>
> If we want to encourage newbies to take up genealogy and enjoy as we do,
> we
> need to be a smidge less uptight about all of this sourcing business.
> Source
> accurately, yes. Source completely. Source *usefully*, and analyze
> compellingly. But don't source obsessively. We are, I think, in danger of
> becoming a bit obnoxious about all of this. <g>
>
> Herein concludes my (not so brief after all) tirade. :D Lee is certainly
> not
> wrong, and he (and Terry and so many others) are a veritable font of
> information and assistance. But I think we need to stop *worrying* about
> it
> quite so much. Examining just a few issues of a few prominent genealogy
> publication quickly makes it obvious that there are many acceptable ways
> of
> doing this, and that most of them aren't as burdensome as some of the
> forms
> we find ourselves concocting. Far more important for us to spend our time
> *analyzing* those sources and explaining our conclusions. Which is the fun
> part anyway.
>
> Cheers!
> DeAnna
>
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> DeAnna Burghart
> TMG Shortcuts, Variables and Report Cheat Sheets (Word and PDF)
> http://members.cox.net/danieleb765/genealogy/
>
>
>
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