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Archiver > TMG > 2006-07 > 1151806002


From: Lee Hoffman <>
Subject: RE: [TMG] source output form
Date: Sat, 01 Jul 2006 22:06:42 -0400
References: <7.0.0.16.2.20060629154854.04c95d18@acm.org><LPBBJNIOBJEJOGJFMDGJGEMLLMAB.ddburghart@cox.net>
In-Reply-To: <LPBBJNIOBJEJOGJFMDGJGEMLLMAB.ddburghart@cox.net>


DeAnna Burghart wrote:
>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?

Yes, that person is a 2nd-degree cousin --- to you! But if you
publish (even if only within your family), the report may get copied
to wind up being read by your great-grandson's mother-in-law's 2nd
cousin's grandson who is looking for information about their
great-great-grandfather and this is the only reference they have ever
found about him.


>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?)

They could - unless they rented the film to create the digitized copy
and then sent the copy back to the archives. The question is whether
the digitized copy has been enhanced to make it more readable (not
unlikely for many census pages). Did the enhancement cause a written
character or two or three to alter enough to be read differently that
the same person might have seen it in the film?

>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.

No, if the situation is simply a different interpretation, that is
one thing. We all have had experiences of finding data that we know
is simply interpretation error. Did the enumerator write Ohearn or
O'rear? But when the writing is clearly one thing and the citation
is for something else entirely, the situation is different.

On the other hand, the above situation is not the sole reason that we
seem to "go overboard" in our citations. The problem is that even
when we read the data correctly, our keyboards don't always transmit
correctly all that we tell it. How often have you gone to a document
from a citation and not been able to find the data being cited? The
citation says it is on page 23, line 14 of the census,but when you go
there you find a Smith Family instead of the expected Jones
family! But as you look at the citation more closely, you note that
the Supervisor and Enumeration District (SD & ED) is different than
is show on the viewed page. So you go to the corresponding page for
that SD & ED and find that on line 14 is the expected Jones
family. If the SD & ED were not included, we would not have found
the data unless we did a page by page review or done the same
research that the other researcher had done.

Similarly, we look in the index and find the entry is on page 23, but
there is nothing on that page for the entry. Again, not much we can
do except read or scan the entire book. In a citation, if we include
a chapter number or title or some other reference, this may help the
reader overcome our typing error.

In the last case, am I saying that we should now start adding chapter
or other reference data? No, unless we think that the page number
alone might not be enough. This would be the case if there are a
number of printings/editions of a book.

>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.

Yes, we should verify everything. But there is a point at which we
say "enough" (usually for the umpteenth cousin's sister-in-law's
nephew <g>) and just accept the data as is. Of course, in this
extreme, we probably quit long before getting to this point. The
question whether we accept the rare un-cited data and we would be
more accepting if we gain trust of the author through our other verifications..

>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:

Maybe oversight by the editor? Maybe a change in the way citation
will be done in the future?

> * Footnote 16, p. 91 -- FHL microfilm number, no mention of
> Salt Lake City
>repository.

Or more likely, the author is relying on footnote 4 on page 86
where FHL is shown parenthetically to the full name and location.

> * 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.

The fact of inclusion in a certain issue of the NGS Quarterly (NGSQ)
may be enough to satisfy the editor in this regard.

> * 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

Keep in mind that the papers published in NGSQ have been heavily
edited, and that most references to the National Archives is by way
of the abbreviation "NA" similar to the FHL usage. Much editing is
often a trade-off by the editor between fully spelling out something
and extensive use of abbreviations in order to fit papers within the
limits of the allotted pages of the quarterly. As for the location
of the National Archives, apparently that is enough well-known that
it need not be stated. Even Elizabeth does not require it per her
Full Footnote Census models.


>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>

I see your point. And it may be worth considering. But where is the
dividing line. For those well versed in research, the line may be
reached soon. But for new researchers, we might should be more
detailed. How much is too much? In some cases, one could be less
detailed, but we also should be consistent. If we aren't that is
also confusing to a reader. So if we need the detail on some
citations, we should also have the detail on all similar citations.

>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.

Keep in mind that the heavy editing of these publications is done in
a word processor which allows the author/editor to reduce a lot of
the "verbosity." But we seldom know which citation in a Journal
report will be first, second, etc., and thus we have to assume that
any one will be first in some report. Of course, that means that we
can produce the Journal report to a word processor and then edit it
to reduce the redundancy and verbosity just like is done in publications.

For what its worth -

Lee Hoffman/KY
TMG Tips: <http://www.tmgtips.com>;
My website: <http://www.tmgtips.com/lhoffman>;
A user of the best genealogy program, The Master Genealogist (TMG)


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