Jerry, Appreciate your comments. From Evidence Explained, Mills (2007 edition): 1.1: "When we gather under a lens all our bits and shards of evidence, we form a mental picture of a time, place, event, or person." Also in 1.1: "Research is much more than an accumulation of data. It is a process that requires continual comparison of new information against the old." 1.9: " Investigators in all humanistic fields are trained to seek multiple sources for any information they report-the theory being that one source can confirm another. However, quantity cannot trump quality. " 1.41: "As researchers, we should continue to evaluate the credibility of every source against new evidence. To do that, our research notes must do more than merely name a source and cite its location. Our notes should also describe the source in sufficient detail that we, at any future point, can reconsider our evaluation." So, it's pretty neat that our "research notes" can be gathered and combined into our family history software. The "evidence" (source material) can be added to the same family history software and reviewed and re-evaluated as additional evidence is found and added. Thus, for the example I gave in my TMG project, there are 16 source citations for a birth record, and out of those, there are 1 to 3 (best sources) that support my conclusion for the birth record event (TMG) or fact (RootsMagic). However, next week or month, or next year, additional evidence may surface, meriting re-examination of the evidence. So, collecting and saving the source citations in the family history software is a great thing, and choosing 1 to 3 citations to display in reports and turning off (but not deleting) the others is all that's needed, which TMG provides, Legacy appears to support (not tested), and RootsMagic does not. (If I'm wrong about RootsMagic, I apologize in advance - just started looking at RM). Hopefully, RootsMagic can add this feature in a future version. Tom M. -----Original Message----- From: tmg-refugees-bounces@rootsweb.com [mailto:tmg-refugees-bounces@rootsweb.com] On Behalf Of Jerry Bryan via Sent: Friday, October 03, 2014 9:53 PM To: tmg-refugees@rootsweb.com Subject: Re: [REFUGEES] Source citations Ah, so. I understand. Actually, in all my years with RM I've never seen a single message in either the RM e-mail list or the RM forums that makes a wish for something like this. And that's interesting because I struggle with it myself. Namely, when a particular source citation is better than any previous source citations, what happens to the previous citations? If I delete them, then I've lost something of potential value. If I don't, then I get huge numbers of citations for a particular item in a report. Neither situation is very good, so I wonder why no RM user has ever wished for an improvement in this area? Indeed, why didn't I request an improvement in this area? In actual practice, I mostly keep all citations. The exception is that when I start with some sort of index entry (e.g., information from a marriage index) and later I find the original source which the index entry was pointing to. I'm not sure if it's really a best practice, but under these circumstances I will usually delete the index entry from my RM database as a source citation Jerry -----Original Message----- From: Tom Momeyer via Sent: Fri, October 03, 2014 9:28 PM To: tmg-refugees@rootsweb.com Subject: Re: [REFUGEES] Source citations Edited message below. Jerry, sorry my original message was not clear to you. My point regarding including or excluding citations to sources in reports or website output, is that TMG allows this to be done on an individual citation basis; Legacy appears to be similar (but not tested by me); RootsMagic does not. *** To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to TMG-REFUGEES-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the message subject and body. ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to TMG-REFUGEES-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message