General Question: Sources - Citations, Difference?

Peggy, core citation principles (like the definitions of source and citation) have not changed. The confusion you're trying to work through stems from the fact that some software programs incorrectly use these terms. A footnote does not indicate that "we have left the source material and are reading the citation material" because the citation is the whole footnote.

Every citation guide, including EE, identifies the two terms this way:

Citation: a statement in which we identify the source(s) of an assertion.

Source: the actual artifact, book, document, ... website, etc. from which we obtained our information.

Some genealogical database programs mistakenly take the first part of a citation and call it the "source" while using the term "citation" for just the last part of the citation.

The debate to which you refer stems from confusion over the difference between citations used in a bibliography (source list) and citations used in a reference note (i.e., footnote or endnote). A source list citation is a generic entry. The reference note is both general and specific. For example, if we are using a book:

• Our SOURCE LIST citation will identify the book completely; but it will not point to any specific place in the book because, theoretically, we studied the whole book and various parts of it are relevant.
• Our REFERENCE NOTE citations, the one we create when we take notes (manually or via input into a database) and when we write, are keyed to each specific assertion. There in the reference note, our citation should provide all the information that identifies the book, together with the specific page (or volume:page, or map, or table, or whatever) that supports what we have just asserted. A citation in a reference note frequently includes several sources, as well as discussions of quirks or problems in the source or its information.

Obviously, a census is a source. Following the basic pattern above, a source list citation to a census will identify the census broadly, from a geographic standpoint. A reference note citation will identify it more specifically. Typically here in the U.S., the breakdown is this:

• SOURCE LIST ENTRY: We identify (a) the census, the state, and county, and (b) the film or the website that provides the census images or the archives that holds the originals.
• REFERENCE NOTE: We use all of the above data but also insert, between (a) and (b) the specific details that identify the local jurisdiction, the page/dwelling/family numbers, and the specific person or household. Again, a single reference note might include several different censuses if we need to cite several that agree or disagree on a particular point.

Relational databases blur the line between these two types of citations. That creates confusion for those who have not yet had the opportunity to learn the basic principles or standard vocabulary. Some software uses the term "Master Source" for the generic data that goes in the source list entry. Some refer to the source list as a "pick list."

Once users have created a source list item, when it is time to create a reference note, they "pick" an item from the list of "master sources" and the software will repeat that data for their reference note. The software should then allow them to add additional data that specifically states the local jurisdiction and the page/etc. numbers, then add any other relevant information necessary.

The debate to which you refer rests upon differences of opinion as to how much detail needs to go into the source list entry and it has existed ever since software of this type was created in the late 1970s. At the time Evidence! was published (1997), the common practice was to start a census citation with the name of the person of interest; this is the pattern that Evidence! followed. However, software at that time was far less flexible. Whatever census ID was created for the source list entry automatically became the first few words of the reference note—which meant that users, in order to begin a citation with an individual name, had to create a source list entry for every person they researched.

Today's software developers can quite easily rearrange elements from one form of citation to another, although not all programs do so. In the meanwhile, with the expansion of Evidence! into Evidence Explained, EE's recommended citations addressed this problem.

EE's Chapter 2, "Fundamentals of Citation, discusses much background that will help researchers understand the relevant principles and practices. It also includes various options for source list arrangements that resolve a variety of debates of this type. Most of today's major genealogical programs incorporate EE, so that anyone who uses the guide alongside the software can interface smoothly.