Under the citation detail on the source screen, there is a field for "Date Citation was made." What exactly does this mean? A publication date? There is already a space for publication info. Thanks, Melanie

Hi Melanie, Richard Halliday's answer is a good one, but I'd like to add something that will explain the purpose behind the "Date Citation was made" field. As Richard pointed out, there is often a gap between the date of the event and the date the event was recorded. For example, it is not uncommon to get a certified birth certificate from a vital records office that is actually a certified document transcribed from some original documents that you do not have access to. In this case the gap between event and recording may be many years, and it is not uncommon for there to be errors in the transcription. Especially if the original document is in poor condition or the handwriting is difficult to read. You are essentially at the mercy of the accuracy of the transcriber. So if some discrepancy ever turns up, you would be able make some evaluation of the credibility of sources by how long the gap is between the event and the source. If you interview an aging ancestor to get birth dates that happened 75 years ago, unless you can verify the dates from other more reliable sources, you should enter the date your ancestor was interviewed so that it is apparent to those who look at your data in generations to come that there was such a gap. If a better source shows up later, they can account for the discrepancy. In many cases, you will not be able to determine a reliable citation date, so that field will often be left blank. I remember some years ago visiting a cemetery outside London looking for a lost relative. The caretaker was very helpful to point out a shed in the corner where they kept the lawn mover and where there was a stack of old burial records. I was very excited to find 400 years of old records stacked in a dank corner but was less excited to discover that the entire stack of records were written in the same handwriting, meaning that someone recently had transcribed an enormous amount of information many many years after the fact. That is a problem. Richard Rands At 08:46 AM 6/24/2005 -0600, Melanie Petersen wrote: >Under the citation detail on the source screen, there is a field for "Date >Citation was made." What exactly does this mean? A publication date? >There is already a space for publication info. > >Thanks, >Melanie