I am struggling with learning to be an accurate, reliable searcher and recorder of our genalogy and family history. So much of the information (family stories) that my sister and I heard, as well as the stories my husband and sister-in-law heard, have turned out to be so much smoke. I want to leave a solid trail for my grandchildren and hers.
It is obvious to me that research must have sources cited so that others can verify or expand on my work. I learned of Evidence! and immediately purchased it; then I learned of the Quick Sheets. The examples seem pretty clear cut until I start to apply them!
I'm a new researcher — so new that the only researched people meeting GPStandards or me and my husband!.That means that I'm now concentrating on my parents and his parents. Most of my research just now is focused on census records. When I have located (or probably located) our parents' generation in all available census records, I will have a good idea where to go to (online or in person) in order to find facts like birth certificates, death records, land records, marriage records, and similar items in the paper trails. It's no use hoping to find my mother-in-laws parents mentioned in the Morganfield, Kentucky newspapers, since the census shows that she mostly grew up in neighboring Webster county. (She always mentioned Morganfield when she talked about growing up.)
So now I'm beginning to have a collection of census records that show our parents and their siblings, their parents plus those siblings, and some for THEIR parents (our great grandparents) in my efforts to place these families in time and space.
The QuickSheets by Elizabeth Shown Mills, published as aids to "citing online historical resources" list three types of entries: Source List Entry; Full Reference Note; and Short Reference Note. I can build a good template for any of these styles in my software program (in fact, I have the ability to build all three — I just need to name each style so that I can pick the right one for my note in the appropriate place).
The Full Reference Note would be the note that tells other researchers just what was used, just where the repository is, the exact roll, or exact census page, and so on. I'm fairly sure it should contain the information that my husband has enhanced the downloaded image for our ease in studying it. The Short Reference Note would be what you use when you refer to this particular image in additional instances. WHAT is the "Source List Entry"?
Also, where do you actually USE each form? My instinct is to save the Full Reference Note for "final" printouts of Family Group Sheets and for end notes for each "chapter" of the report (Register, Ahnantafel, or Descendant-syle, or what have you) that you are turning into a Family History, with the Short Reference Note used for following citations.
That would probably mean that the Source List Entry turns out to be what you use in your software to attach to facts and events that will generate these other reports. And also that the Source List Entry would be what shows up in the Research Logs. Am I on the right track?
If that is the case, I suspect I need to keep the Full - and Short Reference Notes in a separate word processing document, keyed to the source number that my software generates for the Source List Entry.
I feel like I'm thrashing around, trying to find my way through prickly bushes here. Am I by chance on the right track in using these citation forms?
Sue