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Archiver > TMG > 2000-01 > 0947566300


From: "Mills" <>
Subject: Re: TMG-L: printing repository name in footnotes
Date: Mon, 10 Jan 2000 22:51:40 -0600


Several past messages have carried the following exchange:

(1)
< I have accessed my Swedish records through microfilms from the LDS library
in SLC. At first I put that as the repository, but then though better(?) of
it, and . . . changed it to be the Landsarkivet in ...>

(2)
< I would disagree. Unless you have actually seen the records in the
Nowegian locations, . . . Realize that the citation details -- volume, page,
record -- are likely to be different from what you might have recorded from
LDS, and that if one were looking in Norway it may be a completely new
search.>

(3)
<"Evidence!" treats microcopy material from the LDS Library as somewhat of a
special case. Page 83 of her book (the bottom example) indicates that you
would first cite the as you would the original and then you would append
the information about the
LDS microcopy material. >

May I add about 2cents worth here? Comment No. 2 I agree with totally.
Comment no. 3 is right in pointing out that Evidence! treats the Family
History Library as a special case. However, the p.83 reference is a generic
and abbreviated "template" that assumes <grin here> one has already read the
much longer discussion of FHL microform in the preliminary chapter
"Fundamentals of Citation."

To quote from just the first part of that discussion on pp. 33-34:

"The trove of microfilm and fiche available at the Family History Library of
the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is so varied that additional
considerations are needed to construct a clear citation:

- Records of local, state, and federal governments held by the library in
microform are commonly cited in the same manner as those records would be in
their original depositories -- *by copying the label precisely from the
filmed book or file, rather than by copying the FHL label.* "

The section goes on (among various other things) to counsel that the FHL's
film be also identified in the citation because that is the version used --
pointing out that any film edition can differ from the original (pages can
be omitted, etc.) and FHL's filmed version of any record may be different
from another existing film of the same records.

The key to proper correlation of the FHL film to the original book or
file -- in whatever archive in whatever country -- is that phrase "copy the
label precisely from the filmed book or file" rather than copying the FHL
label. FHL's filmers tend to assign a generic label that will fit FHL's
database.

One problem with this principle, however, is that many people do research
before they realize just what they should have been recording. If that's the
pickle we find ourselves in -- if we did *not* copy the precise title from
the record book itself -- then we would be better off citing just the FHL
film and the FHL label that we copied, then adding a generic comment to
provide our own description of what we think those records are.

This issue is not one on which there is agreement among American
genealogists who teach documentation or edit major journals (which is why
Evidence!, p. 33, says "It is also wise (but not obligatory) to add a
notation that the FHL film was used." Several highly regarded genealogical
journals (and all the history ones in my acquaintance) cite records viewed
on FHL film *without* any reference to the FHL film itself -- as though the
originals were consulted. The Evidence! recommendation that FHL film number
be cited *in addition to the identification of the original material that
was filmed* is the one we follow at the NGS Quarterly. The Q totally agree
with Lee's premise that our citation should not imply we consulted something
we didn't actually see, or make it seem that we visited a repository we
didn't actually visit.

Elizabeth Shown Mills, Editor
National Genealogical Society Quarterly


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