Kirsty, I source what I, myself, know. In this case, the source of your evidence is the person who supplied the info. I would note where you might find the original, so that you or another researcher could more easily view it first-hand. But you did not personally view the source document. You aren’t even sure that the person supplying it did. For me, a source documents the source of the information that I used to reach a conclusion. Everything else goes into determining the quality of that source. For some facts, I may not want to have better sources. I may not be able to justify the expense, or maybe a better quality source doesn’t exist. So, for my purposes, the source is what I used, not what I could have used. The ‘coulda, shoulda, woulda goes into notes.
Don From: Kirsty M. Haining [mailto:khain...@comcast.net] Sent: Monday, December 09, 2013 5:08 PM To: LegacyUserGroup@LegacyUsers.com Subject: RE: [LegacyUG] sourcing questions Don — Thank you for this thoughtful response. It helps clarify some issues in my mind. It sounds like, in my specific situation, you would advocate sourcing the person who supplied the vital certificate rather than the entity that created or holds those certificates. This is opposite what Jenny was saying she does — in the example you used, Jenny would (if I understand her correctly) source the birth certificate’s issuing agency and then comment that she received the image of the birth certificate from Sarah Rubenstein by email who said she got it from her professional genealogist who visited xyz County Courthouse in the Summer of 2010). The actual style of sourcing, then, seems like one of those stylistic choices that a genealogist will choose and then hopefully stick with consistently (like burial notes versus cemetery event). Your comments on “form” versus “substance” and the purpose being to help another person find that same information are also helpful. I think I can sometimes get bogged down worrying over the “right” way to do something, when what’s most important is that the information is communicated. It seems like every year or two I’m updating the way I handle sources; they become more and more precise. (And I always vow that one of these days I’m going to have to go back and fix the incomplete sourcing I did back when I was first getting started.) I felt confused about what to do earlier today, but now I feel more confident in the choices I’ll end up making for my particular sourcing situations. Thank you for your response. cheers, Kirsty Haining Seattle, WA J From: Don Hanson [mailto:terra...@comcast.net] Sent: Monday, December 9, 2013 1:09 PM To: LegacyUserGroup@LegacyUsers.com Subject: RE: [LegacyUG] sourcing questions Think of every fact (or event) that you record for an individual as something that needs to be proven ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’. Your source citations are your effort to build a case for a particular conclusion (fact or event). The quality of the source can make or break your case. It helps (for me, anyway) to remember the reason that you record sources. Your memory is not going to perfectly remember everything, especially as your tree gets bigger. You will find records with information that contradicts or conflicts with other records that you have gathered and you’ll want to figure out which is the most accurate. Sometimes you’ll discover that one paper trail is following someone who is not the person that you thought it was. Your source citations will help you come to a reasonable conclusion. Let’s say that you received an image of a birth certificate from a cousin who attached it to an email to you. The email may have said that she, or a genealogist that she hired, made a copy of the original document on a visit to xyz County Courthouse, sometime during the Summer of 2010. You could create a new Repository with your cousin’s name, say Sarah Rubenstein, recording her address, phone #, website (if she has one), and email address. If she is the source of several facts in my tree, I might create a master source calling it something like ‘Sarah Rubenstein’s research’. I would use that source and record the specifics of the email as they pertain to the birth certificate. In other words put as much as you can in writing, in a consistent way, so that you or others can follow how you came to the conclusion that a certain birth date is correct, for example. Unless that person can see the document themselves, what you or your cousin say is simply hearsay. The idea is to make it easier for that person to find the original document. In that respect, the ‘form’ is less important than the ‘substance’. Where did you get it? What do you know about it? You will have the opportunity to Analyze Source Quality on the Detail Information tab of the Source Citation detail screen. You add source citations on the same screen that you add events or facts to a person (click the paper/pencil icon in the middle of the icon bar below the general person facts or…click on the books icon to edit the Sources assigned to the person. Or…from the View tab>Master Lists dropdown, choose Source… As is usually the case in Windows programs, there are several ways to accomplish the same task. Use whichever is most intuitive to you. BTW, use the Help tab > Help Index and begin typing the term that you want help with into the box. I typed sour and had a list of “source” related subjects come up. Don Hanson From: Kirsty M. Haining [mailto:khain...@comcast.net] Sent: Monday, December 09, 2013 1:18 PM To: LegacyUserGroup@LegacyUsers.com Subject: [LegacyUG] sourcing questions I’ve been trying to figure out the answer to a sourcing question and have not been able to figure out the answer through the SourceWriter templates or through flipping through my copy of Evidence Explained, so I thought I’d ask here and see if someone else knows the answer. When you have a digital image of a vital record, the SW prompts you through the documenting the website source of the image, collection name, yada, yada, yada. You are also prompted to put in the date you accessed the website. So here’s the question: what if you received the image from a friend or family member? The birth certificate image or census image may originally have come from Ancestry or HeritageQuest or maybe even ScotlandsPeople, but YOU are not the person who accessed the website. How then do you cite the digital image of the record if you got it secondhand? As far as I can tell from the book, you’re supposed to source your source (the individual) as well as the real source of the digital image (the website vendor). I’m just not sure how to construct the source citation to show that. And what if you don’t know the source of your source, but you have a census image or a vital record image in front of you? And finally, once I’ve figured out the output format I’m supposed to have, how do I get that result in Legacy? Thanks in advance for the help. cheers, Kirsty Haining Seattle, Washington J Legacy User Group guidelines: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/Etiquette.asp Archived messages after Nov. 21 2009: http://www.mail-archive.com/legacyusergroup@legacyusers.com/ Archived messages from old mail server - before Nov. 21 2009: http://www.mail-archive.com/legacyusergroup@legacyfamilytree.com/ 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 Legacy User Group guidelines: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/Etiquette.asp Archived messages after Nov. 21 2009: http://www.mail-archive.com/legacyusergroup@legacyusers.com/ Archived messages from old mail server - before Nov. 21 2009: http://www.mail-archive.com/legacyusergroup@legacyfamilytree.com/ 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
