Referencing for Genealogists E-Book

Ian G. Macdonald

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 246

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

Reliable genealogical conclusions depend on reliable data. Central to any good investigation is an appreciation of where the data came from, so that other investigators can re-examine it and re-establish the conclusions reached. Genealogy is little more than anecdote when the sources for facts are not cited and where clear references to sources are not given. Referencing for Genealogists will enable others to follow in your footsteps because it gives you the means to write clear, unambiguous references that provide solid support to the evidence you offer towards your conclusions. It is packed with examples that the reader can learn from and that also provide a treasure trove of sources invaluable to any genealogist.

Leseprobe

First published 2018

The History Press

The Mill, Brimscombe Port

Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 2QG

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

© Ian G. Macdonald, 2018

The right of Ian G. Macdonald to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 0 7509 8840 7

Typesetting and origination by The History Press

Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd

eBook converted by Geethik Technologies

Contents

Foreword

The Strathclyde experience

The background to this work

Contributors and collaborators

1INTRODUCTION

Quality in genealogical investigation: why does all this matter?

What do we mean by sources?

Primary and secondary sources

A trail to follow for those who come after

What exactly is ‘referencing’ or ‘citation’?

How far can you go with material from others?

The nature of evidence

Limits to evidence

Standards of acceptability in genealogy

The digital revolution

2THE MATERIALS WE USE AND THE PLACES WE FIND THEM

The physical

The digital: written, spoken, video

3CREATING INDIVIDUAL REFERENCES: PRINCIPLES

Key elements and guidelines

Characterising the source material

Specifying the location

Dealing with versions

Capturing the references

4THE ‘HARVARD’ STYLE

Origin; lack of a standard

Publishers’ tastes

Some published versions

5USING OUR ‘HARVARD’ IN THE DIGITAL AGE

URL/web address guidelines

6USING ‘HARVARD’ STYLE FOR SECONDARY SOURCES

Referencing a monograph

Referencing a monograph within a series

Referencing a chapter in a book

Referencing a dictionary or encyclopaedia entry

Referencing a biographical or alumnus entry

Referencing a journal paper or magazine article

Referencing a conference paper

Referencing an unpublished thesis or dissertation

Referencing an archived letter

7CLOUD SOURCING

Referencing an item of personal e-mail

Referencing an item read on an electronic mail discussion list or forum

Referencing an item from an online blog or vlog

Referencing a web page

Referencing information found using an e-book reader

8REFERENCING FOR GENEALOGICAL AND ARCHIVAL SOURCES

Some theoretical background

Genealogical sources and their classification

Major source categories

Source types

Sources for sources

Records and indexes

Belt and braces

General structure for genealogical references

9NOMINAL RECORDS

Referencing BMD records

Referencing census returns

Referencing electoral listings

Referencing directories and professional lists

Referencing membership lists

Referencing service records

Referencing testamentary records

Referencing monumental inscriptions

Referencing newspaper announcements and obituaries

Referencing grants of arms

10MATERIAL RECORDS

Land and buildings

Referencing tithe maps and apportionments

Referencing manorial records

Referencing inquisitions post mortem

Referencing sasines

Referencing retours

Referencing Scottish royal charters

Referencing valuation rolls

Referencing Griffith’s valuations

Personal possessions

Intellectual property

11PROCEDURAL RECORDS

Referencing travel records

Referencing court proceedings

Referencing admission registers

Referencing prison registers

Referencing poor relief records

Referencing taxation records

12OTHER PRIMARY RECORDS: GUIDELINES

Referencing newspaper articles

Referencing official reports

Referencing legislation

Referencing ephemera

Referencing a letter, conversation or private correspondence

13IMAGES

14MAPS

15USING THE REFERENCING PRINCIPLES IN YOUR OWN WRITING

Footnotes and endnotes

Bibliographies

16WORKING WITH SOFTWARE

Bibliographical referencing software

Genealogical software

17FUTURE CITATION

Life’s audit trail

An expanding world of administrative records

Mining social media?

Linking to DNA analyses?

18ENDPOINT: OR A NEW BEGINNING

Bibliography

Notes

Foreword

Genealogy is little more than anecdote when the sources for facts are not cited and where clear references to sources are not given. That may be a harsh judgement, but in a world awash with poor genealogy it is a call for raising standards.

This book is about making your work better, more credible, more useful and easier to communicate to all those who may be interested in it, and in what you have achieved and wish to say.

Referencing may seem a bit daunting at first but, like so many things, it is straightforward once you get used to it. The book concentrates on general principles and offers many examples to illuminate what is going on. As a bonus, there are many sources cited in the examples that are valuable to every genealogical researcher, and some may take your investigations off on new paths.

The Strathclyde experience

This book has its origins in, and takes its inspiration from, things initiated not so long ago in Scotland that, themselves, are part of a continuing effort to raise standards in genealogical practice.

The University of Strathclyde launched its first courses in postgraduate-level genealogical studies in 2005. These were taught on campus in Glasgow and made available online. A switch to complete online delivery and tuition soon followed. The initial offering of a postgraduate certificate was immediately followed by a postgraduate diploma and soon could be followed by a year of supervised research leading to the degree of Master of Science in genealogical studies – the first of its kind in the world.

The first students graduated with their diplomas in 2008 and with MSc degrees in 2010. The emergence of these qualified genealogists marked a step change in genealogical practice, not just in the UK but around the world in the many other countries where Strathclyde’s online students are based.

The background to this work

From the outset, Strathclyde courses insisted on a high quality of delivery from students that would build on the prior experience they all possessed. So, as part of the disciplined, systematic approach demanded of them in their investigative work they were expected to provide clear identification of all sources used in reaching their genealogical conclusions.

Guidance was provided to them in how to cite these sources and on how to format references. That guidance has been improved and enhanced over the years to make it ever more suited to good genealogical practice. Until now the material has been available only to students, but there has been a growing recognition that it could be of value to a wider audience.

For that wider audience, the guidance and explanation has been expanded much further to create this small book in the hope that it will be of service to the genealogical community.

The book does view sources and referencing from a UK perspective. However, it assumes that immigration and emigration, and families scattered worldwide, are an integral part of that perspective. Sources from many parts of the world, from wherever a family has spread to, must therefore be used and cited in support of genealogical conclusions. A consistently clear way of referring to these sources is thus essential to enable good communication among practitioners. The approach in this book is sufficiently general to be valuable to anyone from outside the UK, particularly those with a link to the UK. That being said, the book’s focus is also primarily on sources from the English-speaking world.

Contributors and collaborators

Ian Macdonald has prepared this book for publication. However, it has its origins in material prepared by Bruce Durie and Graham Holton, the initiators of the Strathclyde courses, and has been enhanced greatly over subsequent years by Tahitia McCabe and other members of the Strathclyde tutor team.

Some examples have been gleaned from the work of students. These citations have not themselves been cited – that all felt too incestuous – and, in any case, they have mostly been adapted. Lessons too have been learned by observing students struggle with some formats so, if this book makes things seem more straightforward, then thanks must be offered to all.

Other support has been given by members of the Register of Qualified Genealogists (www.qualifiedgenealogists.org), an exceptional group of professionals.

Various examples relate to Mewburns, a family that simply happens to have been studied in detail. More on them can be found at www.mewburn.one-name.net.

Some wording remains from the Strathclyde guidelines along with occasional examples. I am grateful to the University of Strathclyde for permission to incorporate these elements.

1

Introduction

Quality in genealogical investigation: why does all this matter?

Findings need to be communicable. We take this to be a fundamental principle. If findings cannot be shared they have no value. This book is not for the genealogical hermit whose work is to follow them to the grave.

Genealogists gather data relating to people who lived in the past and they use that data to infer things about those people’s lives and, most importantly, to infer familial linkages between them. Notions of ancestry or descent are developed. Whether or not these notions are correct and the linkages are accurately made are central to good genealogy – by which we mean reliable genealogy. Reliable genealogy is genealogy that can be replicated. The quality of the work is assured when others can reach the same point, and come to the same conclusions, by using the same information sources.

Reliable conclusions depend on reliable data. The old GIGO acronym – garbage in garbage out – beloved of practitioners in information technology, applies equally to genealogy. We need to be able to convince others that the data is reliable and that there is therefore a sound basis for conclusions. Good genealogy revolves around ways of establishing how good the data is. It proceeds in steps, where logic is applied to the discovered data to determine causal linkages. If the data is at any point unreliable, the logic fails and can produce false or misleading conclusions.

Central to any good investigation is, therefore, an appreciation of where the data came from – the source – because, by knowing where it came from, any other investigator can re-examine it and re-establish conclusions reached by others. Equally importantly, they may be able to re-interpret those conclusions by introducing newly found material. By providing references to sources, so indicating where the information can be found, a transparency is added to any investigation. That transparency offers an assurance of quality because all assertions made can always be checked.

What do we mean by sources?

Quite simply, a source is a place where data is found and from which relevant information is gleaned. It is some form of record in the broadest sense, whether it be on paper, carved in stone or in the form of a SNP1 found in DNA analysis.

Data consists of values in the record. Of themselves the values convey no meaning until placed in a defined context – at which point they become information. 03Apr1851 is data. It is just a string of numbers and letters and tells us nothing. We may think it is a date, but that is just an assumption based on poor evidence (we infer that from the format, but we might be more reluctant to accept it as a date if, for example, the data were 3Ap8 – and indeed a record from the year 8 would be remarkable). That data becomes information only when it is in a field headed ‘Birth Date in day-month-year format’, so that some meaning is assigned to it. It then becomes useful information to the genealogist, and becomes all the more so when it is concatenated with a ‘Name’ like Jemima Jones.

Sources, then, are forms of record with data positioned in meaningful contexts. Genealogy builds from its sources – depending on how reliable they are. Typically, we try to categorise sources to indicate something about their possible reliability.

Primary and secondary sources

A primary source is a document or physical object which was (usually) created either during or close to the event or time-period in question. It can be an original, first-hand account of an event or time-period. Some types of primary sources include:

• Original documents: diaries, family bibles, birth certificates, census records, letters, interviews, news film footage, autobiographies, government legislation, international standards and many more;

• Creative works: poetry, drama, novels, music, art;

• Science: reports of scientific discoveries, social and political science research results, results of clinical trials, results from a DNA analysis;

• Relics or artefacts: pottery, furniture, clothing, buildings.

Primary sources provide us with data or raw facts that, placed in context, become information we can use to build a picture of a person’s life, or that of a family. Typically, the data requires close examination to determine its exact nature and significance. Only then can the facts be used with confidence, collectively, to provide an interpretation of circumstances that can serve as a history.

Examples of primary sources include:

• Newspaper or magazine articles which are factual accounts of events of the time;

• Diaries such as The Diary of Anne Frank;

• Government Acts such as the Education (Scotland) Act of 1872;

• A journal article reporting new research or findings;

• Photographs by Diane Arbus of migrants to California;

• A 1911 English census householder return [these were filled in by the householder; earlier ones were filled in by an official];

• The 2013 United Arab Emirates State Visit Programme at the official UK royal website The home of the Royal Family: https://www.royal.uk/united-arab-emirates-state-visit-programme;

• A blog item reporting on the events of the uprising in Cairo in 2013 as they occurred;

• A Twitter entry commenting on a current event in an individual’s life.

Things are not always as clear cut as this might suggest. There are many types of record that are almost primary; primary-ish, if you like. Many of these get termed ‘derived primary’. A derived primary source is a source based on a primary source but with a level of intermediation (when someone else has had a hand in it); for example, a transcription of a census record, a Bishop’s Transcript of a parish record, or an abstract of a will. We will look at these more closely a little later when dealing with the nature of evidence.

Secondary sources are quite different. Whenever we read around a subject and gather background information most of the materials we use, like books or journal articles, will be secondary sources. A secondary source interprets and analyses primary sources. It may be based on primary sources, other secondary sources or a mixture of the two. Secondary sources are one or more steps removed from the event and are often written at a date later than the events being described. However, secondary sources may present pictures, quotes or graphics from primary sources.

Examples of secondary sources include:

• A journal or magazine article which interprets or reviews previous findings or work;

• A history book such as The Highland Clearances by John Prebble;

• Encyclopaedias or dictionaries such as the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography;

• A newspaper article written in 1980 about the long-term economic effects of the First World War;

• A website entry such as the Henry VIII portion of the official UK royal website The home of the Royal Family: https://www.royal.uk/search?tags[0]=Henry%20VIII.

It is typical of a secondary source that the author has put a personal stamp on the material presented. The secondary source is an individual view of things, however authoritative or canonical it is intended to be. All writing about history is secondary.

A trail to follow for those who come after

It is a good discipline to record details about your sources as you use them. These details can include names of the authors, the title of a website or book, the URL of a website and the date the item was published. The details needed for different sources vary, so please check the sections on secondary and primary sources below. Noting and writing down these details as you make use of sources can save many unhappy hours spent ‘re-finding’ source material in order to create your references.

When you write any form of family history, or even just make a family tree available online, you should always aim to allow your readers to go back and check the details for themselves. Their perspective and interests will be a little different. They may be looking for links to other families and historical events; they may have access to new data that permits an altered interpretation. The trail that you leave (an audit trail, if you want to be technical) needs to show others who follow exactly where you found your facts. The clues you leave are the references you cite. The reference, therefore, must be clear and unambiguous so that the trail can be retraced.

What exactly is ‘referencing’ or ‘citation’?

Referencing is quite simply providing details of where you found your information. Typically, it is a matter of saying what the source is, where it can be found and, possibly, where within it the specific information lies.

Citation takes place within your text and provides a pointer to the reference for the source you have made use of. You are placing a marker to acknowledge your use, at that point, of an idea or wording gleaned from elsewhere.

As a general guide:

• If you draw on someone else’s opinion, facts, or generalisations, you must offer a reference to that writer and his/her work and provide a citation for it; or

• If you use his or her words directly, use quotation marks around that quote within your work and, again, provide a citation.

This simply lets the reader know you are presenting information you have found and indicates where it has come from and where they can find it. It is also a courtesy to the author to acknowledge their contribution to the general understanding of things. So, you must cite and give references for:

• Assertions of fact that cannot be presumed to be common knowledge;

• Direct quotations or paraphrases of other writers;

• Opinions and generalisations derived directly from other writers; and

• Tables and diagrams.

There are three interlocking parts to citing and referencing within your writing:

1. Indicating your use of a quote or information from another source within your work – i.e. citing.

2. Creating individual references for each source you’ve cited within your work.

3. Linking the citation of a quote and/or information within your work (from point 1), through the use of a superscript number, to the corresponding individual reference (that you created as point 2) in either the footnotes that come at the bottom of the page of text on which the quote or data appears or in endnotes collected at the end of the whole document.

Each of these parts will be described individually below, but remember that this is an interlocking system and no part can stand alone.

How far can you go with material from others?

Safely using quotes and information from other sources

Direct quotes from another’s work need to be placed within quotation marks, for example:

In her bestselling history of Scotland from 1999, Dr Clancy stated, “All the best boiled sweets come from Dundee and were first created during the mid-1850s.”13 Clearly this is a hotly disputed claim and many have responded to her statement.

As we’ve said, assertions of fact that cannot be presumed to be common knowledge (in the context of genealogical work, this includes the birth, marriage, death, occupational and other information you will be reporting), paraphrases of other writers, generalisations and opinions derived directly from other writers, and tables and diagrams created by someone other than yourself, should be cited and given references. For example:

In 1845, there were three brothers in Glasgow, the Sullivans, making a hard sweet from molasses, which was advertised fortnightly in the Glasgow Crier.14 It can be argued that this candy could be seen to be a boiled sweet and thus a forerunner of the infamous Dundee species.

The information on the Sullivans and their molasses sweet was taken directly from a fictitious article in a journal written by one Dr McBrien of Western Kentucky University and thus needs to have a reference created for it.

For example, in the footnotes section that comes at the bottom of the page on which the information or quote appears, a reference for the information cited by the superscript 14 might appear like this:

14 McBrien, Angela. 2008. First boilings or the sticky history of sweets in Scotland. History notes. 4(13). p. 45.

Note that the page number from which the quote was taken is given at the end of the reference. This enables the reader to find the exact place from where the quote or information comes rather than having to read through the entire work. This is very important to the reader!

When in doubt, create a reference for the information used; it is better to over-cite and reference from the outset rather than leave your reader wondering where you found a piece of information. This is particularly important in an academic setting to eliminate any question of plagiarism.

Plagiarism

Citation and referencing are an antidote to plagiarism. Plagiarism, quite simply, is passing off other people’s work as your own. Most often that is done by copying text and incorporating it into some published work of yours without acknowledging the source. It can also be done by using someone else’s idea – again without acknowledgement.

Plagiarism is unacceptable because it is a form of theft – in this case of intellectual property. Naturally, we are all influenced by other people’s ideas and published material. The right thing to do though is to acknowledge such influences and cite references to the sources.

Our ideas and understanding grow within the context of other materials and thoughts that we have referred to and have become familiar with. Our conclusions emerge from the ways we have analysed that information so it is proper to let others appreciate how we got to those conclusions.

We do not pursue this to absurd levels. We do not cite all conversations with influential friends or every book we read during our school days. We do cite material we have studied and taken note of when preparing a piece of genealogical work or a family history.

Here are examples of the kinds of things that can constitute plagiarism:

• Inclusion of phrases or ideas from another’s work without the use of quotation marks and appropriate acknowledgement of the source;

• Summarising somebody else’s work without acknowledgement;

• Paraphrasing somebody else’s work by changing a few words or altering the order of presentation without acknowledgement;

• Copying somebody else’s work;

• Using somebody else’s ideas, theories or opinions without acknowledgement, or presenting work which is substantially somebody else’s ideas as one’s own;

• Collusion or the representation of a piece of group-work as the work of a single author;

• Duplication or the inclusion of material identical, or substantially similar, to material which has already been published, in another publication;

• Commissioning, stealing or acquiring material prepared by another person, and submitting it as your own work;

• Copying data/experimental results/statistics/references from whatever source (e.g. work of colleagues, notes provided on courses, textbooks, published reports) without acknowledgement;

• Copying tables, graphs, diagrams or other visual material without acknowledgement.

Quoting from someone else is acceptable so long as the source is acknowledged and cited (and so long as the amount of material contained within the quote is of a modest length). You cannot be accused of plagiarism if you have done this.

Good software systems exist today that exploit the power of free-text search to pick out similarities with other published material. Detecting plagiarism is easier now than ever before and is rapidly becoming easier still. To avoid all possible misunderstandings in anything you write, the message is: Cite and reference all your sources.

The nature of evidence

Evidence consists of the facts we extract from the sources of information turned up during our researches. We use these facts in statements that we assemble to provide what we hope is a logical argument leading to a satisfactory genealogical conclusion. That conclusion allows us to say ‘this is who this person is’ or ‘this is how these people are related’.

In genealogical work, especially when identifying people in the past and linking them into family groupings to develop pedigrees, accurate information and incontrovertible facts are important. The picture we assemble that allows us to say who a person really is, and who they are related to, may come from a range of sources. Each source provides certain facts or assertions and these combine, we believe, to provide a coherent view that allows us to say with some degree of assurance that the person we are describing really is who we think.

The issue was described earlier as one of reliability, so let’s digress for a moment into what that means.

If things are incontrovertible then they are highly reliable. However, we are often faced with information that is less certain and, therefore, less reliable. To build a case from this evidence we must be able to assess its reliability, and include that assessment in our arguments. We also must be able to place it in context with other evidence and show that there is no, or little, conflict between the various pieces of evidence that can be assembled. The accumulation of assessed evidence may reasonably substantiate our case.

The question then becomes, how do we carry out that assessment?

We have already dealt with the generally used distinction between primary and secondary sources. At first sight it seems as though primary sources must provide the better, more reliable facts. If only!

The first thing we must consider is that the records are all created by humans. The next thing to note is that humans are not very good at getting things right. We spell badly; we introduce assumptions whenever we think we know things already; we interpret in the light of what we have experienced previously, or what we believe. We live in a world where there is too much information gathered by our sensory systems. Our brain prevents overload by focusing on patterns recognisable from previous experience and it then predicts what should happen next. Indeed we ‘see’ what will happen next even when it does not happen – that is the basis for conjurors’ success with close-up magic.

There is the famous example of ‘Chinese whispers’, where some phrase is whispered to the first person in a long chain then whispered in turn by each person to their neighbour. This results in a garbled message arriving at the far end, however careful each person believes they are being as they communicate. Transcription is an equivalent process in the world of records – errors will creep in. Assumptions are a key part of how we try to make sense of a complex world.

So how good is an old parish baptismal record? Well, it would not have been written by either of the parents. So, who provided the information and who wrote it down? Did the mother tell the cleric, or was it the father? Were the words mumbled, or in dialect? How long was it since the birth? How much did the excitement of the event affect memory? Was it two minutes before or two minutes after midnight? Did the cleric pass on the information to a recorder? Had the cleric scribbled a note to himself about it or was he relying on his memory – perhaps on a day when he had to deal with the affairs of two dozen other parishioners? Did the recorder write it down immediately? How sober was he?

Parish records occasionally go missing. In England, there is sometimes a substitute available in Bishop’s Transcripts. These were copies that had to be sent in to the central administration of the diocese. Quite a relief to find them, but nevertheless, they are transcripts. By convention we treat the Bishop’s Transcripts as primary sources (though we may fudge the matter by calling them derived primary). We must acknowledge that they are less reliable than the originals so we must also acknowledge that there is a spectrum of reliability.

Similar issues exist with census records. In UK censuses between 1841 and 1901 the householder was given a form to fill. Enumerators then copied the content into their schedule book and the householder’s version was discarded. All that we know about today is the enumerator’s version. It is the primary source, though it is ‘derived’. Is it accurate? Well in the case of members of the Mewburn family of north-east England, about one third of them are enumerated as Newburn! If you were a Mearns living in Scotland you might naturally became McArns, as inbuilt assumptions about Scottish spelling kick in.

When assessing reliability of evidence and dealing with situations where the identification of individuals is rendered difficult through the presence of multiple candidates or conflicting evidence, we need to be explicit about the status of each piece of evidence.

In the USA, a quasi-legal approach is sometimes taken.2 A proper distinction is made between types of source and the kinds of information they provide. Sources are described as original or derivative records, and authored narratives. Information is described as primary and secondary, or possibly even undetermined (where it is unclear whether it is based on first- or second-hand knowledge). The approach then goes on to categorise the evidence gleaned from the sources and the evidence they provide as being direct, indirect or negative.

If genealogical evidence is to be used in a court of law these distinctions may be helpful – though, as we have seen, it may be difficult to pin down the degree of originality of a record and the extent to which information is first hand. Arguably this approach adds precision. Alternatively, it can be thought of as over-analysed without adding the precision it imputes.