"Tracing Our Roots" Newsletter Archive (A monthly genealogy newsletter written by the late Brenda Kellow, dec'd, for the Plano Star Courier newspaper. We've included all the ones we could recover.)
Citing published records is not so much of a problem as are online citations. By typing your information into the MLA Webpage Citation page at http://www.studygs.net/citation/mla.htm, it automatically formats it for you in seconds. You need only to copy and paste it into your document. I rely on this site anytime I have a question about a published citation. The public is not as familiar with Internet citations. Already some Internet sites are unrecoverable. In order to find existing ones, the citation must tell the story of its existence. This week, I received a request from a reader wanting to cite one of my columns online, but the reader did not know the proper format. I hope that I can explain this effectively.
I am going to use one of my columns as an example. First, I checked the little $6 laminated "QuickSheet" by Elizabeth S. Mills, Citing Online Historical Resources. Her examples show both a first-time use of a source and one for those times when the citation appears more than once, since ibid is now discouraged. Although I have a problem with the first citation, I have no problem at all with her short reference note citation and I use it exclusively.
Electronic Delivery (Archived)
Kellow, Brenda, Google Supports Digitizing Public Records. Plano Insider. 13 May 2007. e- newspaper, archived (http://www.planoinsider.net/content/current/pulse/pulse.pdf : accessed 17 May 2007) p. 2A.
The short reference note citation:
Electronic Delivery (Archived)
Kellow, Google Supports Digitizing Public Records, p. 2A.
There is a caveat to this first citation and to some others I found. Because the Plano Insider does not have the circulation of major newspapers such as The New York Times, my requirement for a proper citation should contain more information on how to access it in the future: the publisher; where it is located; when it appears; etc. I chose as my second choice the $55 "Chicago Manual of Style, 15th ed." It is revered by writers as the tome for using correct citations. It added only the newspaper s section. One needs to satisfy all the requirements to fully cite a reference if you want it to be a roadmap back to the source. To do this, I must combine vital parts of both suggested formats. If this means developing your own footnote style for this, so be it. If you develop and use your own format, the rule is that you must always be consistent. My preferred format follows:
Kellow, Brenda. Google Supports Online Vital Records Access, Plano Insider Sunday newspaper publication, 13 May 2007. "Tracing Our Roots" column, Pulse section, p. 2. Plano, Collin County, Texas: Star Community Newspapers. Electronic Delivery. Accessed 17 May 2007, http://www.planoinsider.net/content/current/pulse/pulse.pdf.
The QuickSheet has at your fingertips the genealogically preferred online citations for census images, historical records, passenger lists, Social Security Death Indexes, etc. It is handy, takes up little space on the desktop, and perfectly complements "Mills Evidence: Citation & Analysis for the Family Historian" published by Genealogical Publishing Company of Baltimore. The Manual is heavy, bulky, but every writer should have a copy on their desk.
Brenda Kellow, dec'd, Certified Genealogist and Certified Genealogical Instructor, had a Bachelor s Degree in history and taught genealogy courses at the local Community College and computer genealogy at the University.
