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From: "Gail Nestor" <>
Subject: Source Citation Detail Questions
Date: Fri, 21 Oct 2005 16:30:58 -0400
References: <11af01c5cc75$86821880$6401a8c0@VALUED7B9600FA>


Ms. Mills, I was also very excited to read about your QuickSheet Online
Source Citation Style Guide and promptly ordered it. This is a great help
to those of us who need detailed examples to follow and who really want to
get into the nitty-gritty.

I have a few questions/observations that I would like to put out there for
comments:

1) On the Census Image example, I noticed that it shows "U.S. census" rather
than the more specific "U.S. *federal* census." Would either be okay? I do
occasionally have a state census, in which case I add the word "state" to
clarify. Of course, these are usually obvious because they tend to be taken
on the "off" years.

2) The web site given in this same example is http://www.ancestry.com.
Should the root site always be given, rather than the exact sub-page - or
does it depend on the particular source and the complexity of the web
structure? I can see the benefit in using the main site for Ancestry.
Ancestry could go and re-do their whole site indexing and then our citations
would all have to change as well.

3) I noticed the Ancestry.com image number is not listed in the example.
This is probably for the best because I noticed that the image number they
use in their "Image Source" is often times different than the number you see
at the bottom of the screen when you let the cursor hover over the minimized
image.

4) The only part of the citation I find hard to implement is the use of the
"accessed date" as part of what I call the "master" source. Using my
software, I lump all census entries for a particular county together under
one master source title (i.e. 1880 U.S. census, Hampden County,
Massachusetts, population schedule). Then I cite the specifics (i.e. town,
page, dwelling, fammily, etc.) in the citation detail. Using the example, I
would either have to include the web site address *and* the accessed date as
part of the detail for each entry, or I would have to create a separate
"master source" for each census entry to allow for different accessed dates.
This is not tidy and is harder to search and edit in a database. Of course,
there is also the fact that I unfortunately haven't recorded the accessed
dates for literally thousands of entries in my database (shame on me!)

I know that ultimately the citation's main function should be to lead the
reader back to the root of that information so that it can be verified or
authenticated. However, these issues of style and standardization are
always on my mind. I am grateful that you are helping answer these
questions for many of us. Please, please put a *lot* of examples of every
conceivable type of source in your upcoming book. I will be one of the
first in line to buy it!

Gail Rich Nestor
Smyrna, GA
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~nestorgenealogy/

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