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Archiver > APG > 2004-02 > 1076786894


From: Christine Crawford-Oppenheimer <>
Subject: Re: [APG] Repositories, Sources, and Citations
Date: Sat, 14 Feb 2004 14:28:14 -0500
References: <001701c3f30f$6547f720$dc1afea9@K9>
In-Reply-To: <001701c3f30f$6547f720$dc1afea9@K9>


I hate to prolong this discussion, but for another angle on the source
citation question.... Aside from genealogy, I deal with this at work
when advising students who are writing papers. One reason for citing
sources is so that someone reading the item where the source is cited
can look at the item the researcher was looking at, and if the person
saw it on the Internet, rather than as a book or manuscript, the reader
needs to know that. The teacher (reader) needs to be able to see the
exact source the student saw. As has been mentioned, errors can be made
in transferring something from book/manuscript format to a source
available on the Internet, whether through typographical errors in
transcription, or the strange things that happen when OCR doesn't
interpret characters correctly, etc. So, if a person views a source on
the Internet, the URL for that source should be included in the
citation, as well as the bibliographic information about the source that
has been digitized. For example, if a student in my library gets a
periodical article from an online database, s/he needs to cite the
article in the format for an article, but also to include that it was
viewed on InfoTrac Expanded Academic ASAP with the URL for the
database. When citing a Web page, MLA style also dictates including the
date on the Web page (if available) and the date that the person viewed
the Web page, in case someone decides to look at the source later, and
the page has been updated in the meantime.

Christine

--
Christine Crawford-Oppenheimer
Hyde Park, NY 12538
Genealogical Writer and Speaker
Author of Long Distance Genealogy:
Researching Your Ancestors from Home
http://www.familytreemagazine.com/store/



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