A few weeks ago, I wrote an article called Genealgy Orienteering. In that article, I described the process of locating the correct place where records may be maintained. That included using maps and determining what geopolitical organization was responsible for governing the place at the time that records were created.

I received a number of responses to that article. "Along Those Lines ..." , I want to talk to some documentation issues that you, as a serious genealogist, want to address.

Genealogy is a methodical study that seeks to document lines of descent of a family or families. In most cases we use written and recorded records. In other cases we may use word of mouth, i.e., family traditions. But what is most important is that we document our research and resources so that someone else can retrace our path more easily. That might include our descendants or, if you're seeking admission to a society such as the D.A.R., it may be a committee of some sort. Ultimately what you want to do is produce a traceable record of what materials/sources you used, where they were obtained, the repositories where materials are stored, and/or any other supporting or corroborating materials you used.

Genealogists have been looked down upon by historians and academicians precisely because so many genealogists do not document their sources or do so sloppily. Genealogy is often pooh-poohed because the efforts of the amateurs are not documented.

If you are reading this column, I believe you are a serious genealogist, committed to supporting your research with scholarly documentation. To that end, I offer this primer on how to document your research and proper formats of citations. Remember .... without documentation, your research will only be considered surmise and speculation.

One of the responses I received to the Genealogy Orienteering article stated, "One of my pet peeves is people who don't include the county, parish or province in their place names." She was absolutely right! What good is it to notate that your great-great grandparents were married in Frankenau in 1844 if you don't know whether it was part of Austria or Hungary at the time or who had jurisdiction over the area? If your other set of great-grandparents were married in Mebane, North Carolina in 1840, in what courthouse would you find their marriage record? Orange or Alamance County?

The point is this: if you are going to the trouble of locating where the records are to be found, you should be documenting it. "Where?" you ask. You should be documenting this information in the following way in your genealogy database program and/or on your pedigree charts:

I'm always locating new information in books and periodicals. I use these items as secondary sources until I can obtain copies of the originals, visit the repository and examine the originals myself, or both. Sometimes I find information in magazine articles. More often I find information in the publications of the genealogical societies to which I belong. What do I do with these?

If I make copies of specific pages of a book for my own use, I'll also make a copy of the title page and the page with publication information. When I get home and have properly evaluated and digested the information, I'll enter relevant data into my genealogy database. At the same time, I enter a bibliographic citation as follows:

What if you're citing magazine and journal articles? The following format is a good one for you to use.

Oliver, F. Duane. "The Cemeteries of the North Shoreof Fontana Lake in Western North Carolina (Part 2)." The North Carolina Genealogical Society Quarterly. XXIII, No. 3: 298-313. Raleigh: North Carolina Genealogical Society, 1997.

In both cases above, it's also wise to add a one-line notation indicating the repository, library, or archive where the material is housed. That makes it easy to locate it again.

Finally, in this age of electronic information on the Internet and on CD-ROM, there is another body of citation style for these electronic resources. Janice Walker at the University of South Florida in Tampa has developed what many consider to be the authoritative citation format. Her excellent Web page for this can be accessed as follows:

The format is:

Author's Lastname, Author's Firstname. "Title of Document."Title of the Web Site (if the page you are citing is a secondary page to the main Web page). Version or File Number (if applicable). Date on the Web page or last revision date. URL of the Web site (date you accessed the site).

Dates are shown as they are in all genealogical references: DD Month Year (ex.; 27 February 1998).

When you properly document your sources, you provide an easy to follow path for yourself or other researchers to locate the information. Your research takes on the scholarly attributes that it should because, after all, you are a serious genealogist. Right?