-----Original Message----- From: Jenny M Benson Sent: Thursday, June 28, 2012 5:21 PM To: [email protected] Subject: [LegacyUG] Citing website sources
There has been some discussion here recently about whether or not/how to cite website URLs and related matters. What I am never quite sure about is how to handle situations where a citation one has created in the past is no longer *quite* accurate. For example, for quite a while it was possible to access records from a FamilySearch site for which the URL was http://search.labs/familysearch.org. That URL is no longer valid but it is possible to access the same records from www.familysearch.org. Similarly, Ancestry used to have a database entitled "England & Wales, Birth Index:1837-1983" and one entitled "England & Waes, Birth Index: 1984-2005". Then all those records were combined into one database called "England & Wales, Birth Index:1916-2005." I could give several other similar examples. So what does one do about one's citations? Just update the title of the database or the URL of the website and carry on using the same Master Sources, or create a new Master Source every time there is a subtle change in the details? If one of the main purposes of a Source is to allow others to replicate my research, they aren't going to be able to do that if they try and access http://search.labs/familysearch.org. On the other hand, if I say I accessed a record on www.familysearch.org on 15 May 2008 people might be very mistrustful of anything I say knowing that that must be a lie! -- Jenny M Benson Jenny, I take your point about the confliction between date and the URL availability. However, it actually does not affect me as I do not fill in the specific URL in the Master Source, in fact my Master Sources are very skeleton like (as you know, I am a fairly extreme lumper). The detail URLs all go in the Repository in the Source Detail. There is another problem with not updating them and that is the failing URLs on your website. Search Engines do take into account the number of broken links when ranking a site, the more broken ones then the lower the ranking, not to mention the host of irate users! Hope that helps a little. Ron Ferguson http://www.fergys.co.uk/ Legacy User Group guidelines: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/Etiquette.asp Archived messages after Nov. 21 2009: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ Archived messages from old mail server - before Nov. 21 2009: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ Online technical support: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/Help.asp Follow Legacy on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/LegacyFamilyTree) and on our blog (http://news.LegacyFamilyTree.com). To unsubscribe: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/LegacyLists.asp
