Why You Should Cite Your Sources

If you're going to publish your genealogy research online, you really should include your sources so that other people can verify your work.

Ok, a bit of a personal opinion in this week's article, but it's still an important issue that I think needs to be addressed. Compiling a database of relatives for your own research is one thing, but once you create a website and put your information out there in the public eye, you really need to cite your sources.

I've recently been working on my English branches and have found a number of great online trees that will really add to my family tree, but I am reluctant to just dump this data into my tree without having a clue where this information has come from. I've found enough errors in online that I am not confident to just accept what I stumble across.

Many websites just say that their information is personally researched and/or donated by others. In other words, people are collecting unverified info from other people and continuing the chain of possible errors or misinformation. Well, the information must have come from somewhere. Why does no one cite their sources??

People who study genealogy are not doing themselves any favours by grabbing any tidbit of info without knowing where it came from. If more people cited properly, then those citations would be passed on with the information and we could all keep track of where information is coming from.

So I'm asking everyone who reads this, to add citations to their data when publishing it the web. Most folks use genealogy software to spit out their HTML coded websites, so it should be simple enough to have the program include your sources as footnotes. If we want the Internet to remain as an invaluable source of genealogical information, then we all need to be a bit more diligent in keeping it accurate and properly documented.

If the idea of trying to document each book or record seems confusing, I have some citation examples to help you figure out the proper way of recording your sources. Most genealogy software programs make it easy to format and store your source info, so don't let yourself get intimidated by it.

_{First published at Suite101}