Elizabeth Richardson wrote: > People ought to be able to think this stuff through. Name of document, author of document, enough additional information so that the next person can look at it too. Do you really need 5 screens of drop down menus to record this? Absolutely not! ... keep it simple, though clear...
Elizabeth, I totally understand your sentiment here. When I use software and I'm faced with five screens of drop-down menus, my tolerance gets tested, too. Still, the problem with the "keep it simple" concept in genealogy is that the records we use *aren't* simple--unless we're simply citing a plain ol' book. Worse, all the sources we use absolutely defy everybody's efforts to make them simple. There are an infinite variety of types out there. The essentials for one type often are not the same for the next type. If we work primarily in a specific set of resources, simplifying those seems doable. If we work primarily in a specific region, we develop for ourselves what seems to be a simple of principles. But the wider net we cast for records, as our experience and needs and families expand, the more we are absolutely smackgobbed by how UNsimple it all becomes. Let me give you a bit of perspective here, from the experience that went into EE--across 10 years of trying to reduce thousands of variants into as few patterns as possible. EE has twelve chapters that center upon source types (the other two chapters, at the beginning, cover fundamental principles). Starting with Chapter 3, Archives and Artifacts, I worked my way through several dozen types of archival materials and artifacts owned by families, trying to take the long-established principles and tailor them into a basic structure that would work with everything. Eventually, I came up with a few basic patterns that did work for all. Then I started Chapter 4, Business and Institutional Records, addressing all the different types that genealogists had asked for help on across the past decade. Whooooooooo. That was a rude awakening. The "few basic patterns" that worked for Archives and Artifacts couldn't handle many of the business and institutional records. That meant Chapter 3 had to be worked through totally again, to create patterns that would work for both categories of records. Then came Chapter 5, Cemetery Records. [EMAIL PROTECTED]&*()_+! The same thing happened again. For cemeteries, we have other needs. So, back to the drawing board it was, for Chapters 3, 4, and 5. That process repeated itself almost full time for three years, as I worked through the records of local courts, who organized their materials differently from state-level and national courts, who organized their materials differently from those in England or Australia. Through census records, which was another wild set of variants depending upon whether one cited U.S. federal population returns or state-level censuses in different types of custody or U.S. Native American tribal censuses which are accessed in a totally different way from the population returns. And then through licenses, and registrations, and rolls of all types in all sorts of arrangements in all sorts of places, and vital records, and plain-vanilla publications vs. legal works that are cited differently vs. published government documents which have an entirely different set of parameters. And then there's all those considerations about whether we are using Ancestry images vs. databases--so critical to our analysis of the data we are using. And whether we use "this" set of microfilm that did selective filming as compared to "that" set of microfilm that's covers all the record set--even though the two carry the same title. Or whether we use so-and-so's CD that seems to offer the same as the website of similar name but one's a transcript and one's abbreviated abstracts. &c &c &c! Was all this necessary? Obviously, I think so--based on the circumstances that led to it. In 1979, I did an article on source citation for the _Genealogical Helper,_ covering about a dozen types of basic sources, following Turabian which most history grad students get to know quite well. The late Richard Lackey felt that little article didn't suffice and that much more explanation was needed; so he did a wee book that was still about 10 time longer and offered a dozen and a half source categories, with explanations. Then he promptly died and left U.S. researchers for 15 years saying "Help! I'm using this source that isn't in _Cite Your Sources!_ How do I cite *this*?" The result in 1997, was my little _Evidence!_ with 103 source types, all neatly laid out in clean grids with no caveats about nitpicking differences to bog anybody down. Just about as simple a format as possible to satisfy the demand. Some people groaned at the idea of 103 different ways to cite sources. Others then spent 10 years writing me, calling me, and posting messages on hundreds of forums saying, "Help! I'm using this source that isn't in _Evidence!_ So how do I cite *this*? " The result is _Evidence Explained_, with over 1100 different source types and *much* discussion of why "this" is needed, why "that" is handled differently, and how all this dancing on a pinhead actually effects the reliability of the genealogical decisions we make. Predictably, some genealogists groan at the idea of 1100 different variations. Just as predictably, in another forum today (as most every other day), somebody posted a message saying, "Help! I'm using this source that isn't in _Evidence Explained_. So how do I handle *this*?" Obviously, different people have different wants and needs. It's a challenge for software developers to create a product that gives every user exactly the level of help they prefer. I'll leave that challenge to the software producers to wrestle with. For my part, I'm simply trying to provide the help that people ask for--software producers and researchers alike. I've long since given up on the idea of being able to help everybody one-on-one. There are so many genealogists who want to do the best job possible, but I can't possible answer them all. What I *have* tried to do with the Evidence series to provide different levels of help. If genealogists want help, it's there. If they don't, they can simply ignore it and do whatever they prefer. The germane point here is a line that appears toward the start of both _Evidence!_ and _Evidence Explained_. Citation is an art, not a science. EE goes into detail on that point. To quote from section 2.1, which carries that "Art, not a Science" label: "As budding artists, we learn the principles--from color and form to shape and texture. Once we have mastered the basics, we are free to improvise. Through that improvisation, we capture the uniqueness of each subject.... As historians, we use words to paint our interpretations of past societies and their surviving records. In order to portray those records, we learn certain principles of citation--principles that broadly apply to various types of historical materials. Yet records and artifacts are like all else in the universe: each can be unique in its own way. Therefore, once we have learned the principles of citation, we have both an artistic license and a researcher's responsibility to adapt those principles to fit materials that do not match any standard model." EE covers those principles. It's not just a collection of formats like those you see in your drop-down menus. It also explains the quirks in records--the pitfalls we don't anticipate that cause us problems. (And the kind of explanations that someone on the list recently said they wish that Geoff could provide on screen. But, of course, if he spends his time rewriting EE in his own words, there's a lot of software development that won't get done. :) The principles in EE are ones you can find in many guides to source citation. The explanations of quirks and pitfalls, admittedly, will be harder to find elsewhere. But the bottom line is that you, Ron, and I are in agreement on the most fundamental point: consistency and clarity. The issue is what we have to do to achieve that, so others whose experiences and knowledge base are different from ours can understand us and so there will be as much uniformity as possible, regardless of record type or region. The point of EE, and the apparent intent of the software developers who follow it, is not to set up rigid formats from which no one dare deviate lest someone slap their wrists and call them naughty. The point is to provide guidance, to explain the fundamentals and the trip-ups, to expose users to both sources and considerations they may not have previously worked with, and then allow every researcher the freedom to adapt in whatever ways are necessary for any given record. Elizabeth ---------------------------------------------------------- Elizabeth Shown Mills, CG, CGL, FASG _Evidence Explained: Citing History Sources from Artifacts to Cyberspace_ _QuickSheet: Citing Online Historical Resources, Evidence! Style_ _Evidence! Citation & Analysis for the Family Historian_ (Other QuickSheets are in progress. Wish lists are invited :) *** Holiday discounts on Legacy 7.0, add-ons, books, and more. 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