TMG-L Archives

Archiver > TMG > 2003-01 > 1043887341


From: Lee Hoffman <>
Subject: Re: [TMG] How to cite another researcher's work?
Date: Wed, 29 Jan 2003 19:42:21 -0500
In-Reply-To: <3E3857D2.BFFFF569@pacbell.net>


HypoBob wrote:
>First, I am considering citing this source as a "research report", since
>nothing else in the
>Mills categories really fits. Is there a better category available?

I agree that "Research Report" is a good choice. Others that you might
consider are: "Diary or Journal", "Dissertation", or "Unpublished
Manuscript ".

>Second, how should I cite the source as I key data into TMG? There are
>nearly 500 names here, and if I only cite each birth, marriage, and death
>there will be 1500 references to this source. That seems to be
>repetitious to the point of over kill.

But if you don't do that and later, after adding many other pieces of
information to these and others, how will you know where you obtained this
information? Also if you happen to print a small report on just a
sub-group of this which may or may not include others that are not now in
this group how will you know where you obtained any one piece of the
information in the report.

>What would be the downside of attaching a citation to each name tag? I'm
>thinking of a footnote or endnote that would read something like "All
>vital data for P1 from " It is very unlikely that I will ever go the the
>trouble to duplicate all this research and come up with sources of my own.

I have a similar situation in that I received a cousin's research and
entered it. Now years later without the individual source citations for
each piece of information I would not know where I obtained the
information. This is especially true in that I have added other data to
these persons. Some was duplicative and I just entered the new source. In
other cases, the data was contradictory and required some research to
ensure the correct data was marked as Primary and the other marked as
incorrect.

A big reason for wanting to know the source is to re-check my data
entry. Did I enter the data correctly? In the majority of cases I
did. But there have been a few typographical errors and without knowing
the source I could not go back and re-check myself.

While I may not do a lot of research on a specific branch, I may get a
query asking if I have any information. If I do, I can tell them yes and
where I obtained the data. If I just mark the name only with the general
source that does not mean that all the data came from that source. Only by
noting the source of each specific piece of information can I know where it
came from.

>As for the reliability of the data, his sources are not cited, but from
>his cover letter it is
>obvious that he used a lot of primary sources, and, in addition to that,
>he is a member of this family and still lives where most of the family has
>remained for over 150 years. In the few cases where our research has
>overlapped, we are in complete agreement.

I would probably give this source a default surety of either "1" or
"2". The lower Surety is probably the more correct one. But if I a lot
of confidence in the source (e.g., the person) I may raise that on an
overall basis. But I look at each piece of information separately and ask
how reliable it is and thus assign the Surety based on that evaluation and
try to ignore my thoughts about the overall reliability except in a
general way.

Hope this helps -

Lee Hoffman/KY
TMG Tips: <http://www.tmgtips.com>;
My website: <http://www.tmgtips.com/lhoffman>;
A user of the best genealogy program, The Master Genealogist (TMG)

This thread: