Citing same 'fact' repeated in source

By Anonymous on Wed, 03/05/2014 - 17:55

Forums

When a book (or other source) has the same 'fact' repeated on multiple (non continuous) pages, what is the rule of thumb for citing?

For example, a book states that John Doe was born on January 1, 1900 in several places throughout the book. Do I cite the page number of just the first occurance? I would think that citing every page this statement occurs on would be overkill, but if someone comes across the statement on a different page (such as by finding the information via a Google search) and then looks at my citation, what would indicate to them that I saw the page they are looking at during the course of my research? If there are conflicting statements in the same book, which I've come across before, then citing the pages of both occurrences would obviously be necessary.

Thinking through this further, as part of conducting "a reasonably exhaustive search," when I come across a reference to a person of interest in a book, how much checking is considered "reasonable" to insure there are no more references to that person in the same book? While it would be nice to have the time to fully read through the entire book, it's certainly prohibitive from a time standpoint unless there's a strong likelihood that the book will contain more references to the person. On the other hand, by not doing so, have I truly conducted "a reasonably exhaustive search" to the standards of the GPS?

I appreciate any guidelines you can offer.

Thank you in advance,

Dan

Submitted byEEon Wed, 03/05/2014 - 19:27

Provocative questions, Dan!

With regard to the first—whether we should cite every page of a book on which a certain "fact" is repeated—let me ask another: Why not?  From EE's standpoint, research is not just a matter of mechanically harvesting "facts." What we read in published works are not actually "facts," but assertions whose validity or credibility we then have to evaluate. If a certain "fact" is repeated, it likely appears in a somewhat different context on each page. That context provides some of the means by which we make judgments about validity.

With regard to a "reasonably exhaustive search," let me rephrase that in keeping with the paragraph above: i.e., reasonably exhaustive research.  If it is our goal to merely harvest specific "facts" from a source and that source has an index, then we may feel justified in looking up a name or a keyword and harvesting data from just the pages on which that name or keyword appears. That, essentially, is a search. But here again, from EE's standpoint, research is not just harvesting data. It's not just the accumulation of isolated "facts" but also the accumulation of contextual knowledge that allows us to understand the bits of information we have gleaned.

How much additional study we do in a book, once we've used the index for names or keywords, is something that will vary with every resource we use. It will also vary according to our experience level. And yes, realistically but  unfortunately, it can also vary according to the amount of time we have available at the point of contact with that source. In the end, how much additional study we do, with each of our resources, will often determine how successful we are in achieving our research goals. All too often, the "brick walls" of which researchers speak, are ones they create themselves by dashing too quickly through their sources without gleaning everything those sources have to offer.