Standards for Sound Genealogical Research from the National Genealogical Society

A cold, blustery, winter day was the perfect time to tackle a pile of old genealogy magazines before relegating them to the recycling bin. It would have been perfectly logical to just pop them into the gaping blue hole, but what if there were something valuable still to be learned in one of those twenty-five-year-old journals? And, of course, there was!

Why Sources and Citations are Important in Your Family History Research

(Thanks to StLGS treasurer, Viki Fagyal, for writing this week's blog.)

Sometimes it is good to get back to the basics of Genealogy 101. I remember my first genealogy teacher saying over and over, “You have to document where you found it.” That piece of advice has stuck with me for more than forty years. Good source citation not only helps you remember where you found a piece of information, it is helps someone who picks up your work five, ten, or thirty years from now determine where that information came from. A good citation also helps to ascertain if the source you used was strong enough evidence to prove each name, date, or place. And if you have two different pieces of evidence for the same event, evaluating the source can help determine which one to trust.