* Post a source for the material used for Amanuensis Monday. It is usually in the text rather than an endnote.

* Don’t post a “real” source for the Tombstone Tuesday, Wordless Wednesday or Treasure Chest Thursday posts. Most of the images are from my own collection and I don’t bother. Others do – good for them!

* Don’t post sources for info in Surname Saturday posts. These posts are created from my database, and then edited down. They often include 4 to 8 families with 2 to 15 children each. Doing sources for them is not an option. I’ve been trying to add a general source – e.g., a surname book – if I have one. Unfortunately, information on many of my ancestral families came from family history and town history books, not from original source records. Readers can contact me for the sources if they want to.

* Other posts about individuals or families are sometimes sourced, and sometimes not sourced, depending on the material I have and if I remember to do it!

I am still working on adding sources to my database. It is over 39,000 persons, and I had very few “real” sources when I started. I have thousands now, but they are still in shorthand format.

In principle, I agree that facts should be sourced. In practice, and on a blog, it’s difficult to do consistently. Or maybe I’m just too lazy?

I am the first to say and teach, YOU GOTTA SOURCE your data. I stress to newbies that you must source EVERY single fact you input to your data base, bar NONE! Do it , every single time. I don’t really care if your sources are techy correct, do what works for you. The reality is, very few family researchers will ever publish a work or book, if you take the numbers that research and compare to the numbers that publish. So, source for YOU, so you can remember where you found the information. FOR YOU!

As far as this discussion, it just shows our individualism once again. I just love it. So many ways to approach our blogs. If you are techy and academically inclined footnotes rule, go for it. If you are more into wanting your family to read a bit about their family and want to keep it light, go for it.

Individualism Rules!

I have posts that are just showing what I am doing, what I am researching. These are about works-in-progress, and I don’t source them, as it’s usually just a ‘I’m doing this’ post.

I also have posts that fall in the ‘look what I found!’ category. These normally are about a specific bit of information and the post itself details where I found it. No need to put in a source, as the source is in the post.

And then I have my ‘showcase’ posts. COG posts, posts about local or world history and of course biographies of my ancestors. These posts are written in story-form and I put all of my sources at the end. Although I am thinking about switching to footnotes in future posts for this. Either way, all of the sources I used are in the post.