In the previous issue of Genealogical Computing [GC 17:3 (Jan/Feb/Mar 1998), page 18, “Citing the Sites”], I addressed the subject of citing Web pages, an increasingly important source of information for genealogical researchers. Besides the Web, another major online information source is electronic correspondence, which appears in various forms as private electronic mail (e-mail), mailing list postings, Usenet newsgroup postings, and postings to other bulletin board systems such as America Online’s message boards. These electronic messages, like their paper-based counterparts, must be cited correctly if they are to serve as a proper source of genealogical information.

The purpose of this article is to examine the issues specific to the citation of electronic messages and to recommend some useful citation styles and formats. As in my previous article, I will provide my own view of various citation problems. I must admit that I have been heavily influenced by a large number of experts, whose names and publications I have included at the end of the article. I will assume that you already understand the concepts behind citing print sources.

Just as with Web pages, our citations of electronic correspondence must deal with the answers to four basic questions: who, what, when, and where. Always keep in mind that the primary objective is to facilitate, for your reader, the process of locating the original material.

Who?
Given an electronic message, your first step is to identify its author. With few exceptions, each message clearly indicates at least the electronic mail address of the author, and the vast majority of messages also provide the author’s full name. While we might think the author’s name is sufficient to identify him or her, providing an e-mail address can serve as an additional method of identification. In the online world, some people are better known by their e-mail addresses than by their names!

For the citation, begin with the author’s name; if the author’s name cannot be determined, begin with the author’s e-mail address instead. As with URLs, e-mail addresses should be enclosed in angle brackets (“<” and “>”) in order to avoid confusing the punctuation of the address with the punctuation used by the citation style. Your result would be something like this:

Smith, William J. <wjsmith99@aol.com>. “Boddie family.” 13 February 1998 14:00:04 EST. To Drew Smith <drewsmith@aol.com>. In possession of author (15 February 1998).

The citation for a more anonymous message would look something like this:

<postmaster@xyz.com>. “Re: Can you identify this individual?” 12 February 1998 08:30:15 EST. To Drew Smith <drewsmith@aol.com>. In possession of author (15 February 1998).

What?
Nearly every electronic message has a subject line that serves as its document title. In this, electronic messages resemble printed business memoranda and differ significantly from printed personal correspondence, which, in nearly all cases, lacks a title. Citation experts universally agree that the title should be placed in quotation marks, and it is most common to find the title appearing after the author’s name and e-mail address in the citation:

Jones, John. <jjones@xyz.com>. “Weinglass family query.” 13 February 1998 17:15:31 EST. To Drew Smith <drewsmith@aol.com>. In possession of author (15 February 1998).

If anything, the need for proper citation reinforces the importance of including a brief and descriptive subject line with all electronic messages. I continue to be amazed when I see postings to mailing lists that lack subject lines.

T. Land, in Web Extension to American Psychological Association Style (WEAPAS), suggests that the “Re:” at the beginning of a subject line should be dropped when using the subject as the title in a citation. I disagree; the presence of the “Re:” provides additional information that the message is a reply to a previous message, and suggests that additional information exists concerning the same subject.

When?
While the author and title of electronic messages in a citation are relatively noncontroversial issues, things start to get more interesting when we look at citing dates. There appears to be no disagreement concerning the idea that the date of the message should be cited in full (day, month, and year). However, the time of the message must be included in the citation as well. This idea should not be surprising, given that it is not entirely unusual for an individual to post two messages with the same subject line to a mailing list, newsgroup, or message board during the same day. For that matter, two correspondents may exchange e-mail within the same day without changing the subject line. If one does not provide the times of the two different messages in the citation, how is one to distinguish between them in a citation which is identical in all other ways?

The time of the message should be included immediately after the date of the message using a clear style, such as a 24-hour format followed by the time zone. For instance:

Smith, William J. <wjsmith99@aol.com>. “Eidson family.” 13 February 1998 23:15:00 EST. To Drew Smith <drewsmith@aol.com>. In possession of author (15 February 1998).

Where?
The answers to the questions of who, what, and when seek primarily to uniquely identify a particular source of information, to distinguish it from countless other sources in existence. Matching an author, a subject line, and a date/time from a citation to an electronic message gives us confidence that we are looking at the same document that was actually referenced by the person who wrote the citation.

But a citation is essentially useless unless there is at least the possibility of locating a copy of the original document. Therefore, the remainder of the citation must focus on providing detailed information concerning the location of the electronic message.

At this point, the various types of electronic messages differ sufficiently from each other that we must examine each type in turn, figuring out the best way to identify the location of the message within that particular type. While we cannot exhaust all of the possible types of electronic messages, let’s focus on four of the most common: private/personal electronic mail, messages that appear on an electronic mailing list (sometimes called “listserve messages”), messages that appear on a Usenet newsgroup (usually called a “Usenet posting” or “newsgroup posting”), and, finally, messages found on the bulletin-board systems of commercial online services, such as the message boards of America Online.

Personal E-mail
Personal e-mail refers to messages sent to one or more individuals, where the recipients are typically all known to the sender. It differs from other forms of electronic messages because personal e-mail is not available to the general public. Obtaining a copy of a personal e-mail message normally requires that you contact one of the original recipients, who can either forward you a copy or send you a printed copy.

Therefore, the location portion of the citation for personal e-mail must contain information concerning how to contact one of the original recipients. As a first step, it is reasonable to indicate the names and e-mail addresses of all of the original recipients, or at least one or more of them who may be willing to provide copies. If the e-mail message is in possession of the individual who wrote the citation, it should be sufficient to indicate that the message is “In possession of author,” since the author’s name and postal address is likely to appear elsewhere in the publication. If the message is in the possession of someone else, that person’s name, e-mail address (if available), and postal address (if available) should be provided. For instance:

Jones, John. <jjones@xyz.com>. “Weinglass family query.” 13 February 1998 17:15:31 EST. To Drew Smith <drewsmith@aol.com>. In possession of William J. Smith <wjsmith99@aol.com>, 123 Main St., Newberry, SC 29108 (15 February 1998).

Mailing lists
Mailing lists, sometimes referred to as “listserves,” are vehicles in the genealogy world for announcements, discussions, queries, and answers to queries. Mailing list messages differ from personal e-mail in that such messages are generally available to the public. At the time of original publication, they are certainly available to any and all subscribers to the mailing list, and after publication they may also be available to subscribers and non-subscribers alike in the form of an archive.

If you are reasonably certain that a particular mailing list’s messages are not archived, then you should treat a citation for such messages in the same way that you would treat personal e-mail. However, here the “To” description would reflect the mailing list name and e-mail address. For instance:

Jones, John. <jjones@xyz.com>. “Foshee family query.” 13 February 1998 17:15:31 EST. To Foshee family mailing list <foshee-l@xyz.com>. In possession of William J. Smith <wjsmith99@aol.com>, 123 Main St., Newberry, SC 29108 (15 February 1998).

Fortunately, many mailing lists are archived. In these cases, the citation’s location information should be sufficiently clear as to allow an individual to locate and obtain a copy of the original message from the archive. Here is an example of such a message:

Smith, Drew. <drewsmith@aol.com>. “Splitting the group—some ideas.” 16 March 1994 20:09:01 EST. To ROOTS-L Genealogy List <roots-l@ndsuvm1.bitnet>. Available from ROOTS-L Search Page <http://searches.rootsweb.com/roots-l.html> (15 February 1998).

Usenet Newsgroups
Usenet newsgroups are very much like electronic mailing lists, except that they do not have “subscribers” as such. Also, while mailing lists are either archived or not depending on the whim of the list owner, the entirety of Usenet is available via such services as Deja News, which carries archives of Usenet messages posted since March 19, 1995. (Usenet messages are publicly available on local news servers for a period of time immediately following their publication, but this period of time varies from server to server and is usually no more than a few weeks.) Here’s an example of a citation for a Usenet message that would be available from the Deja News archive:

Smith, Drew. <dsmith@luna.cas.usf.edu>. “New Spring 98 course! Introduction to Genealogy.” 11 December 1997 15:09:53 EST. To <news:usf.misc>. Available from Deja News Power Search <http://www.dejanews.com/home_ps.shtml> (15 February 1998).

Usenet postings that do not appear to be available in any public archive should be cited in a way similar to personal correspondence, with the “To” address reflecting the URL of the newsgroup (for instance, <news:soc.genealogy.misc>).

Bulletin Boards
With mailing lists, each list stands on its own, essentially unrelated to any other list. With Usenet, each newsgroup is named according to the Usenet hierarchy, but there is no other connection between one newsgroup and another.

Bulletin board systems can be more complicated than either mailing lists or Usenet newsgroups, because a board may organize its messages into categories, subcategories, and so forth. Locating a particular message, then, may involve visiting the top level of a bulletin board, then choosing a particular category, and then continuing to make category choices until you get to the particular part of the board where the messages themselves are listed. Messages on most (not all) bulletin boards are not addressed “to” anyone in particular but are merely located in a particular spot to be read by others.

Probably the most commonly used bulletin boards among genealogists are the message boards of the major commercial online services, such as America Online (AOL), CompuServe, and Prodigy. Let’s use AOL as an example. Unlike Usenet, where messages usually remain publicly available for only a few weeks (and thereafter must be retrieved from an archive), the messages in the Genealogy Forum on AOL may be available for months or years before being archived. Here is an example of a citation for a message posted to AOL:

Morgan, George G. <gfsmorgan@aol.com>. “WHITEFIELD, William - Caswell County, NC.” 28 January 1998 00:30 EST. Available from America Online, Genealogy Forum, Surname Center, W Surname List, WHITEFIELD/WHITFIELD (15 February 1998).

Access Dates
In my previous article concerning the citation of Web pages, I pointed out that all such citations should end with the date on which the Web page was last accessed. Web pages are often changed and it is a good idea to alert the reader (the potential user of the citation) that, as time passes since the date of last access, the odds increase that what the reader sees will differ from what the author (the creator of the citation) saw.

Is there any reason to provide a “date of access” at the end of a citation for an electronic message? They either continue to exist exactly as they were originally composed and sent (posted), or they are deleted, ceasing to exist. Unlike Web pages, electronic messages are never “edited.” Readers of an electronic message have every reason to believe that what they are reading is identical to what was originally composed, no matter how much time has elapsed.

Still, for a message cited as being in the possession of a particular individual, it is useful to know when the document was last known to be in their hands. This may provide a clue as to the location of the document if the material has changed hands in the meantime, or if the holder is no longer located at the same postal address.

It is even more important to cite the date of last access for messages available from public archives. Again, while the message’s content will not change, the message may be moved from one location to another or may even be deleted if it is old enough. The date of last access may provide clues to the message’s new location if it no longer appears where cited.

Conclusion
The types of electronic messages focused on here do not exhaust the variety of possible message formats. However, the examples provided here and those found in my previous article on the citation of Web pages should serve as models for other forms of electronic messages, such as those found on local bulletin boards or Web-based bulletin boards.

As more and more people switch from paper-based to electronic correspondence, the ability to correctly and completely cite an electronic message becomes essential. While the method you settle on for yourself may not agree in every word and punctuation mark with those of the experts (who don’t even always agree with each other), you should feel satisfied so long as you have given your reader every reasonable chance to correctly identify and locate the cited material.

For Further Reading
To see what others are thinking and saying about the citation of electronic messages, you may want to look at the following sources: