At 03:44 PM 8/11/02 -0500, Annette D Towler wrote: >That's great Patricia. I am glad someone else uses that detailed of >sourcing. I love FO because I can do the details of sources. There is a >good book out there called "Cite Your Sources" by Lackey and sold for use in >genealogy documentation. I use it a lot to reference howto do it. Lackey's book is excellent and was the standard in source citation for many years. More recently, it has been replaced as a standard by Elizabeth Shown Mills', "Evidence! Citation & Analysis for the Family Historian". Mills book lists standard source and citation styles for types of sources in the computer age that were not available when Lackey wrote his book. Annette, I *do* like your thorough method of documentation, and am glad to see that others are being extremely detailed too. Patricia

Another good book for sourcing is the Silicon Valley PAF User's Group book called Family History Documantation Guidelines. It is filled with examples and such that are easily used in other programs, not just PAF. It costs $10.00 and can be ordered on-line if I remember correctly! Aloha Wayne -----Original Message----- From: P SummersSmith [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Sunday, August 11, 2002 11:09 AM To: [email protected] Subject: RE: [FO] Sources question At 03:44 PM 8/11/02 -0500, Annette D Towler wrote: >That's great Patricia. I am glad someone else uses that detailed of >sourcing. I love FO because I can do the details of sources. There is a >good book out there called "Cite Your Sources" by Lackey and sold for use in >genealogy documentation. I use it a lot to reference howto do it. Lackey's book is excellent and was the standard in source citation for many years. More recently, it has been replaced as a standard by Elizabeth Shown Mills', "Evidence! Citation & Analysis for the Family Historian". Mills book lists standard source and citation styles for types of sources in the computer age that were not available when Lackey wrote his book. Annette, I *do* like your thorough method of documentation, and am glad to see that others are being extremely detailed too. Patricia ==== FAMILY-ORIGINS-USERS Mailing List ==== The "Family Origins. Wish List" http://formalsoft.com/wishlist.htm ??? FAQ ??? -- http://www.graabek.com/fow/fofaq.html

One can be accurate in their source description and not feel required to be as detailed as some of the examples that have been recently given. I am not saying there is anything wrong with being detailed, but one should not think "be detailed or make no effort to cite sources", which I am afraid is the case in some instances. My rule of thumb for citing sources is that I or another person can tell where I got the information and return to the same source to look it up. My exception to his rule would be the addresses, etc. of living sources. Most of us will not be writing a PhD thesis or an article in a professional journal, so the "perfect" format is not as important as knowing the details needed to find the source again. If writing a professional thesis or article, then one will want to cite our sources according to professional standards for where we are submitting the material. FO makes it easy to cite books correctly by correctly filling in the title of the book, the author, publisher and date in the boxes provided. Other media may not be as clear cut. I use a number of general sources, i.e. 1810 census, Birth Certificate, Marriage Certificate, Obituary, etc. Then in the citation detail I put the town, county & page for a census source, the name and date and page for the obituary source if known, etc. Whatever one's approach, add the sources as you go along -- don't think you will know what to add later. You can later change the source format, but you cannot check discrepancies or rate the quality of information if you cannot tell where it came from. A database without sources is essentially useless. Margaret Scheffler