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. Annette DeCourcy Towler Home page for DeCourcy & Pack http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~decourcy/ Web page for St. Cloud Area Genealogists, Inc. http://www.rootsweb.com/~mnscag/SCAG/index.htm Family Researching in SE KY PACK, CHANDLER, WHEELER, FAIRCHILD, RAMEY, MILLER/MILAM/MILLAM, JAYNE, McSPADDEN Researching in NE KY DeCOURCY, ELLIS, BALL, MAINS, LEWIS, EVANS, SPILMAN, HUTCHINS, HAMILTON Researching in PA, IL WESSLING, SOMERS, SCHULER, PLAGGEE -----Original Message----- From: P SummersSmith [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Sunday, August 11, 2002 2:55 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [FO] Sources question The standard for source citation is for a researcher to be detailed enough in their documentation to enable proof and validation of the work. It should provide exact information regarding where the information was found. The whole idea of citing sources is for someone after you to be able to find the same sources. Entering the word "Obituary" as a source really isn't a source, because it doesn't tell whose obituary it is, nor in which newspaper, or in whose clipping collection it is found. The words "Birth Certificate" aren't really a source either, because it doesn't tell you whose birth certificate it is nor where it is recorded. No one can substantiate one's research from such citations. You'll get a wide variety of answers from different individuals, depending on the extent that one wishes to document their research. Some folks are very detailed in documentation and others less so. Some do the barest amount, while others don't do any. I'm a detail oriented person who used to produce technical documentation for a living. I want all of my research digitized and immediately at hand, without having to go look up something in my files somewhere. So I'm just telling you how I do it, from the that perspective. I want it to meet appropriate research standards. As I said, one of my goals is also to have as much of my research digitized as possible. FO provides means to do a lot of that, so I avail myself of its incredible features and capabilities to accomplish that. With DAR applications, I do enter them separately, as you said you have done. Six applications isn't that many. Then, in the "source text" field, I have entered an abstract of what's contained in each of the applications. For obituaries, I enter each separately, and have also entered the text for each obituary in the "source text" field. It is so often that one has occasion to re-review the contents of an obituary because of details contained in it. It's handy to have it right there and not have to go find it in my files. For census records, I enter a county as one source, such as: "1910 U.S. Census, St. Clair Co. MO, NARA T624_801" and reuse it multiple times. In the source citation field, I enter the specific citation, such as: ED135, sht 6B, lines 60-66, dwlg 100, fam 114". Then I include an abstract of the census record in the "source text" field in case I want to review it at a later date (which I often do when I run into conflicts in other data). It's just easier. There usually is enough room to include all text of a source in the source text field. The exceptions are usually pension records (which contain several documents), military records (which contain several documents), complete probate files (which also contain several documents), etc. In those cases, I will title the source as, for example: "Military Pension Record for Samuel N. Straube, General Index to Pension Files, 1861-1934; NARA T288_456, Application No. 1173614, Certificate No. 922374." In the source text field, I include an abstract for each of the documents in the file. There's enough room in the field to do that. You'll get many different responses to your question. Only you can decide how detailed you want to be, and how much time you are willing to spend documenting your research and including that documentation in your database. Another reason I tend to be so detailed in documentation and in wanting to digitize everything is that when I pass from this earth, someone may throw out all the file cabinets and paper files that accompany this work, but they won't throw out the database, which takes only some space on their computer. And I can easily leave that to many people. Patricia At 11:51 AM 8/11/02 -0700, Peter M. Morris wrote: >This may seem an elementary question but it's been troubling me for a while >with no clear answer appearing so I though I'd ask the experts! 8-) > >I have six sources that are all Daughters of the American Revolution >membership applications. Presently I have them each listed separately as: >DAR Application by xxx, DAR Application by yyy, etc . . . > >I'm wondering if this is the best or most appropriate way. Another example: >I have several newspaper obituaries from the same paper on different dates. >Presently, they each listed separately, but I'm wondering that's best or >'standard practice.' > >The part that throws me off is all the different fields in the Source >records, particularly Source Text, which would seem to suggest each source >is listed individually. On the other hand, there is hardly enough space to >list ALL of the source text. So what does that mean, anyway? > >Thoughts, suggestions? ==== FAMILY-ORIGINS-USERS Mailing List ==== PLEASE remove as much of the Original Message as possible when replying to a List Posting. Include only that part of the original message important to your reply.