Flawed records

For researchers, the Internet is an all-in-one paradise, purgatory, and hell. It tempts us with wondrous things packaged in confusing ways. When mishandled or misread, it can create results for which some researchers will damn us forever. A recent query to EE’s Citation Issues Forum makes the point. We might paraphrase the question this way: How do you cite a website that gives you only a teaser—Twitter-sized snippets from many separate articles all run into one jumbled mass?" ...

 

3 February 2014

The Compiled Military Service Records for a dozen men in the Revolutionary War company of Col. Robert Rae credit them with “casualties” at Augusta (Georgia) or Silver Bluff (South Carolina). Yet none of the men actually were casualties.¹