You are wrong, Joan, and it could lead to your work lacking credibility. The person who supplied the documentation is part of the source. If a will or birth certificate is published in a book, that book AND that will are your source. If a person sent you some documentation, that person is part of your source. Why? There are several reasons. For one thing, you did not obtain the material itself. It's polite to mention who did. You should give credit where credit is due. Another reason is, that if something "fell from the sky," you really don't know for sure where it came from. I could send you a will on which I wrote where I got my information, book and page number, and accidentally write, "Will Book I, p 3." How do you know I didn't mistake an "8" for a "3." Your source is EXACTLY where you obtained it, not where someone else did. What you are doing by not properly citing where you got your information is laying claim both to someone else's work and -- possibly -- someone else's mistakes. By the way, I have cited Richard Pence as a source. He was citing another source, but I haven't come across it yet. I'm not going to claim I did. Debbie Richard- The source is how you know the information. And if I have a document such as a birth certificate, baptimal record, marriage license, etc. THAT is my documentation and my source. It doesn't much matter whether I obtained the baptismal record from the church or from Mary Smith or whether the document came tumbling down out of the sky. I know the information because I have it on a document. If the only way I know the information is because I got it from Mary Smith's GEDCOM then Mary Smith's GEDCOM is my source (even if Mary cites sources such as birth certificates in her GEDCOM--if I haven't seen them then Mary's GEDCOM is my source). If Mary Smith told me about information in her privately held family Bible then that is my source and Mary is a part of it because she supplied the information. But the point I've been trying to drive home all along is that if I have a baptismal record that is my source--I could have obtained in any manner. When the only reason I know the information is because I got it from another person or that person's GEDCOM or private family info, then the person is the source. Joan

Debbie <RoverLSmith@aol.com> wrote: > What you are doing by not properly citing where you got your > information is > laying claim both to someone else's work and -- possibly -- someone > else's > mistakes. indeed. I make enough mistakes of my own without copying other people's mistakes and pretending they are my own. <g> I have a whole lot of citations that quote a book's chapter and page and this information is followed with "quoting from Will Book 7, page ..." and so on. I do make some exceptions about "the source." If I ask someone - a professional or a volunteer (ones I have confidence in) to look up a specific piece of information at the court house and get back a photocopy of the document, then I consider that the same as if I had obtained the photocopy during a personal visit to the court house. I suppose I'll get burned on that one some day, but it is getting so my footnotes take up as much space as the narrative itself!!! Richard