Cite Your Sources

When you keep family information from a website, book, e-mail, or newsletter - do you document the source as well? 

If not - you really should - and not just to be nice.

There are three important reasons, in my view by doing so, you:

1. Recognize that people before you have worked on the family history before you (and deserve credit for their work/analytic contributions)
2. Provide for the possibility of followup on a source/person
3. Eliminate the need for re-investigating a fact in your database (unless of course you have reason to doubt the accuracy of data extraction -- that's where (b) comes in.

Some folks will roll their eyes here - or look frightened because they think citing a source is a bit or daunting effort.  Really, it's not hard and there are several critical elements:

1. Author - generally put it in surname first order (e.g. Rempel, Judith) so that it is easy to find in an alphabetical list
   
   

   When the source is an e-mail message, I generally add the e-mail address right into the Author portion of the citation, e.g. Martens, Frank (abc@sommerland.ca).

2. Title - of the work (e.g. e-mail message from Frank Martens to Judith Rempel, or The Old Colony (Chortitza) of Russia).  If the work is part of a larger work (e.g., an essay by one author in a compiled work like "Worship and Teaching in the Sommerfeld Church" in Church, Family and Village).
3. Place where Published: generally a city (e.g. Winnipeg or Altona, MB).
   
   

   When the place of publication is large (i.e. a city), usually the province is not identified.  Where ambiguous or its a small place, province is identified.  Countries are generally not identified.  So, use Morris, MB; or Clearbrook, BC; or Hague, SK; but Vancouver, Calgary, and Winnipeg.

4. Publisher - The body (person or organization or company) that sook on the expense of publishing the book (e.g. Manitoba Mennonite Historical Society or University of Alberta Press).
   
   Frequently, Mennonite family histories are SELF-PUBLISHED, in which case the Place where Published and Publisher portion looks like:  Calgary: Author.  If they are not published (not available for sale), no publisher/place of publisher is generally documented.

Some sample citations:

1. e-mail: 
   Martens, Frank (abc@sommerland.ca).  2006.  e-mail message to Judith Rempel.
2. Book:
   Enss, Adolf; Jacob E. Peters & Otto Hamm (2001).  Church Family and Village: Essays on Mennonite Life on the West Reserve.  Winnipeg:  Manitoba Mennonite Historical Society.
3. Article in Book:
   Schroeder, David. "Worship and Teaching in the Sommerfeld Church" in Church Family and Village: Essays on Mennonite Life on the West Reserve.  Winnipeg:  Manitoba Mennonite Historical Society.
4. Unpublished manuscript:
   Loeppky, Barb.  (1999).  "The Family Tree of Heinrick (sic) J. Wall and Maria Peters".  Unpublished manuscript available from barbdennis@sk.sympatico.ca.
5. Nonbook, non-manuscript document:
   Canadian Mennonite Board of Colonization (1924). Family record photocopy #1196 received from Mennonite Historical Society of Alberta, Calgary.

So - there are three more additional principles illustrated above.

1. Enough detail is provided so that the person reading the account (and noting the source) can themselves figure out how to locate the original document.
2. If a work is published, it is to be italicized (if italics are impossible, underlying is used).  If it is not and is part of a larger work, the title is to be encased in quotation marks and the larger work also identified.  Sometimes unpublished work titles are encased in quotation marks as well.
3. If it's not possible to identify the title of a work - it's acceptable to describe it.

In kinship,
Judii