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Documenting: Sources Short Course
by John Cardiff
Last Updated: 22 Mar 2009

There are four components to every source: 
where did you find this information,
no really, where did you find this information,
specifics please, where did you find this information, and
oh really? when were you there?

Other people call the same four components:
Repository, Bibliography, Citation and Date.

Repository is the name and address of the Archive, Library or Collection you found the Bibliography topic in. Feel free to enter "Grandma's Attic."

Bibliography identifies the book, census, newspaper, etc. you found the Citation in. It typically includes (a) the name of the publication, (b) the name of the author, (c) the name and address of the publisher, and (d) the year the publication was published. (ISSN numbers are a welcome addition.)

Citation is where within the Bibliography topic exactly did you find the information. If your bibliography topic is a book, the citation is a page number. If your bibliography topic is a newspaper, the citation might stop at page number or be more precise: "page 7, fourth column, article title: Local Births."

Date is the date you discovered the information just documented in Repository, Bibliography and Citation.

Optionally a source record may contain either of two additional pieces of information.

The first is a Quote from the Bibliography topic that enhances your reader's understanding. I like to think of such quotes as equivalent to passing a note in school, from the author of the Bibliography topic to your source reader, such as "I rushed the second half of this work, and it might include typos."

The second is your Comment. "The author of this book was an uncle I knew growing up. He was very meticulous, and would not have taken shortcuts."

The Requirement for Sources alone should push most genealogists into using a genealogy program. Manually, sources are a severe pain. On a computer they are a comparative walk in the park.

Typically, with genealogy software, you enter the Repository data and Bibliography data just once, storing it in a Pick List. Only the Citation and Date change for each new piece of data. Entering sources is easy by computer. In fact, when you have multiple source entries from the same source (perhaps an obituary), sourcing is simply a copy and paste moment.
 
Here are some examples.
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