Citing Locational Data

“I wonder,” our inquirer asked, “Why do citations to family artifacts not include our file numbers?” Great question! In fact, we could ask this about a lot of things. These days we all capture images of the documents we use. We have our filing system to maintain those images—sometimes physical but usually electronic. So why do our citations not include the image IDs, the e-folder name or notebook number, etc.?

Getting Real about Those Derivatives

Oh, how we love records that are neatly typed and nicely indexed. Sure, we've heard all those admonitions about consulting original records rather than derivatives. But let's get real. When somebody lived in thirteen different counties in 5 different states, that's a lot of records to plow through. When the records have been "processed" and published, we're going to use those published versions, right?

QuickLesson 1: Analysis & Citation

 

Analysis and citation. Citation and analysis. In historical research the two are inseparable. Each is the egg that creates a chicken that creates an egg that creates a chicken. Amid that cycle, a defect in either the chicken or the egg can have long-term consequences.

As students, we learned that source citation was a chore we must do for two reasons:

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