Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Tuesday's Tip - Correctly Citing Newspaper Articles


I am in the process of putting into the correct format all the citations I used in developing the Hardenbrook family monograph.  Although a tedious process, it is one that is well worth the effort. I am finding additional information on family members as well as documentation mistakes.

If I had known then what I know now…I would have saved a lot of time.  One issue I came across this weekend is correctly citing newspaper articles.  According to Elizabeth Shown Mills in Evidence Explained, Second Edition, in citing newspaper articles, put the name of the person in quotation marks at the start of the citation, then state whether it is an obituary, society note, etc., then the publication, date of publication, page, and column number.  When originally citing the articles I didn’t think to include the page and column numbers.

Sometimes the person you are searching is not found.  So you try searching other family members.  Maybe you came across Mary Jones’ maiden name information in an obituary for her husband, John Jones.   The citation would be helpful to other researchers if the citation on Mary’s maiden name was labeled not “Mary Jones,” but “John Jones,” obituary, etc.  And that is where I made a misstep. If I had labeled the citation correctly, I wouldn’t be spending time searching “Mary Jones,” and getting no hits.
  
I just received an email from Amazon asking if I wanted to sell back my copy of Evidence Explained.  Are they nuts???  I keep it close at hand and use it almost every day.  So, no thank you, Amazon. I am quite happy with my purchase. 

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