I came across this article from Dick Eastman's online genealogical newsletter, and thought it was worth sending along to everyone. As a frequent user of Lackey's book, I'm looking forward to getting my own copy of this one. Bob Young, secretary Kemp Family Association ************************************************ Taken from Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ - Evidence! I normally do not write book reviews unless the books pertain to the use of computers or other technology for genealogy research. However, I will gladly make an exception for this book. "Evidence! Citation & Analysis for the Family Historian" is brand new and is a "must have" for every genealogist. This book describes in great detail how to record source citations. As an aside, I will suggest that if you do not know what a source citation is and do not know why source citations are very important, you need this book! To quote author Elizabeth Shown Mills: "Any statement of fact that is not common knowledge must carry its own individual statement of source. ...Source notes have two purposes: to record the specific location of each piece of data and to record details that affect the use or evaluation of that data." The previous reference book that was widely used was "Cite Your Sources" by Richard S. Lackey. His book first appeared seventeen years ago and quickly became a standard reference for serious genealogists. Unfortunately, Richard Lackey died soon thereafter, and the book has not been updated since its original publication. In the new book, Elizabeth Shown Mills credits Lackey's work and adds, "As I tender this replacement to our field, I do so with tender regret that Richard is not here to make my effort unnecessary - and with a fresh sense of life's tendency to close its circles." Elizabeth is the editor of the National Genealogical Society's scholarly journal, the NGS Quarterly. She is a past president and a present trustee of the Board for Certification of Genealogists and is the present editor of the Board's educational newsletter, OnBoard. She also is the author, compiler or translator of more than two hundred articles and books and is well known as a genealogy lecturer. The new book is slim, only 124 pages. It consists of a short introduction, 25 pages devoted to the fundamentals of citations, 17 pages discussing the fundamentals of analysis, and 44 pages of examples of proper citations. The book ends in several appendixes, a bibliography and an index. The slim size is misleading. The information contained within is detailed and requires significant study. You will not breeze through these pages in a single evening! The book documents proper source citations for probate files, ships' passenger lists, Social Security Death Index entries, newspaper clippings, naturalization records and hundreds more sources of genealogy information. And, yes, it even tells how to write proper source citations for information found in an e-mail message, on a World Wide Web site or in a ListServe message. I'll make a request of genealogy software programmers: please buy this book and then insure that future releases of your program have proper fields to allow for the recording of source information in these formats. "Evidence! Citation & Analysis for the Family Historian" is published by the Genealogical Publishing Company and retails for only $16.95 U.S. funds. For more information, look at: http://www.genealogical.com Copyright (C) by 1997 Richard Eastman and Ancestry, Inc. All rights reserved.