Citation Issues

We just completed a panel review of Genealogy & the Law: Guide to Legal Sources for the Family Historian by Kay Haviland Freilish & William B. Freilich [available at http://www.ngsgenealogy.org/cs/genealogy_and_the_law] on the dearMyrtle Google+ Groups [youtube videos of each session are archived]. After spending 8 weeks it became clear that legal citations were not the same as genealogy citations citing federal & state statutes. I have searched Evidence Explained site and QuickTips #5 has a few examples in the footnotes, but none that actually cite the statute.

I'm wondering when the basic rules for citing titles in EE 2.22 apply to the titles of archival series and record groups. Take the example NARA citation on p. 66 as a case in point. Capitalization is title style, but no quotes are used. Is this exception because the NARA citation guide prescribes titles without quote marks?

---Robert

The citations for State-level Certificates (EE 9.41) list only the year of birth (or death) and don't include the location or county of the birth (or death).

Why is the exact date not used and why is the location (city etc.) or county not used?

I did some head scratching and came up with this citation (First Reference Note) that included the missing information:

I wish to cite a book to show that the publishers of that book were in existence in a particular year.

I do not have that book in my possession and I cannot find a digital copy of that book online.

The information that I have on hand about the book comes from WorldCat.

Here is the citation that I have come up:

I have cited a lot of military pensions for soldiers, widows, and minors. However, this pension contained the widow's application under two different soldiers. The first died during the Civil War and she applied as his widow in 1865. She quickly remarried, and her second husband, also a Union veteran, applied for a pension on his own behalf, as an invalid. The second husband died in 1886 and the widow applied as his widow. She married a third time and applied on behalf of her minor child from the second marriage.

I recently came across a photograph of my Great Grandfather, Walter LINDSEY, in an article in The Philadelphia Inquirer in 1903 (image w/URL posted below).  The article itself does not provide any genealogy information I didn't already have, however, the photo is the first picture I have ever seen of him.

Increasingly more often, offical, government recorders enter information directly into a computer rather than writing on paper forms. This is sometimes called "born digital." I think the evidentiary strength of a born-digital record is akin to a digital image of an original record. That leaves me uncomfortable citing the born-digital database like this:

          "Database name," database, Website Title (URL : access date).

While researching how to cite a foreign language title of a record with a translation, I came across what appears to be a contradiction in Evidence Explained ("EE").

I have found that usually when one sees an apparent contradiction, it is because one doesn't understand all the rules.  So please be patient with me as I work toward greater understanding. :^)

The rule in most places in EE is to put the translation in square editorial brackets immediately following the foreign language title.

EE 2.23, p. 53

I'm a novice at this citation business and I am struggling to cite an online derivative. Any help would be very much appreciated.

The item in question is the transcribed text of a "Maintenance order" dated 1821 in respect of John Ford and Mary Waterhouse from original Ticehurst Parish records.

The transcription is located in an online archive called "theKeep" which has electronic transcriptions of documents from the East Sussex Records Office and other partner organisations.

I was originally pointed to a source by an article published in The Genealogist. The article provided a complete citation for the book in question [as printed in the article: “Walter Clark, ed., The State Records of North Carolina: Miscellaneous, 22 (Goldsboro, N.C., 1907): 246 (Arrears of Quit Rents, Tyrrel [sic] Precinct).”]. While it is very tempting to just use the information in the article without going any further, I wanted to see if I could find the cited source to determine whether there might be additional information I could glean from it.