Footnotes, Endnotes, Sources, Citations, and Attachments: What Works, What Doesn't

NOTE: You may wish to read the comments to this blog post. The comments are more extensive than my original post. 

Genealogy is a rather egalitarian persuasion and the vast majority of the people who are interested in either family history or genealogy have had little or no training in compiling footnotes or endnotes for a formal treatise on a genealogical subject. Many of us associate footnotes and/or endnotes with the task of writing a "research paper" in high school or in a class at the college or university level. If you didn't have that opportunity, then it is likely that you have never used a footnote or endnote in your entire life. There are, however, a small number of people who are professional-level genealogists, some of whom are involved in publishing articles in formal genealogical journals such as The New England Historical and Genealogical Register. In addition, for those of us who want to join a genealogical professional organization and become accredited or certified as a "genealogist," learning to cite sources is one major prerequisite and "proper" citation format is almost a profession in itself.

Here is an example of a partial list of the footnotes to an article published on the American Ancestors website from The New England Historical and Genealogical Register, Volume 172, Whole Number 685, Winter 2018. The article was authored by Eugene Cole Zubrinsky and is entitled, "The English Origin of John Sutton of Hingham and Rehoboth, Massachusetts."



In our modern, online world of genealogy, there is a major ongoing emphasis on providing information about where contributors obtain the information they incorporate into their online family trees. In this regard, all users of the major online genealogy programs are being encouraged to "cite their sources." The absence of a source requires subsequent users of the family tree to redo all the research to verify the validity of the information provided. 

Unfortunately, the need to provide an adequate explanation about the origin of any incorporated information is either largely ignored or misunderstood. Part of the common failure to provide information about the origin of incorporated information comes from the academic and professional publication world. If you have an advanced degree from a university, you probably became aware of publications such as The Chicago manual of style. 2017. This type of publication sets out to standardize the way books, articles, and other publications are formatted. For academics and professional writers, they are a "rite of passage" into the world of doctoral dissertations and commercial writing. It would be fairly simple if The Chicago Manual of Style was the only such publication. There are, regrettably, dozens of such "standards." 

In the genealogical community, there are also standards for publications. Many of the publications have formal publication guidelines. For example, The New England Historical and Genealogical Register mentioned above relies, in part, on the following:

Elizabeth Shown Mills, Evidence! Citation & Analysis for the Family Historian (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1997). The introductory sections of this book are especially valuable.The Chicago Manual of Style, 15th ed. (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2003).

Outside of the realm of those aspiring to publication, there are few guidelines for the average contributor to a family tree website. In fact, there is a significant confusion about what is meant when genealogists talk about adding sources to the information in a family tree. The common terms used are:

• footnotes
• endnotes
• sources
• citations
• attachments

There are probably a few others also. However, from a practical, non-academic, and non-professional standpoint, the whole subject can be summarized as follows:

Tell us where you obtained the information you enter into your online family tree.

That's it. Now, I do have something to write about academic citations. First of all, they are almost entirely useless for subsequent researchers. It is all well and good that the footnotes or whatever follow some acceptable citation standard. But citations, as propounded by the authorities, do not tell us where we can obtain the information. Yes, they say something about "parish registers" or whatever but where is the parish register found?

Our online family tree programs give us the ability to attach both a link and an actual copy of any information we incorporate. That valuable function is entirely missing from scholarly journal articles. If I want to verify what the journal writer cites in his or her footnote, I have to go find the "source" myself. Whereas, if I want to look at the source linked and/or attached to an online family tree, all I have to do is click and look at the attachment. Scholarly articles with dozens (hundreds) of footnotes give the illusion of citation but are in fact a throwback to pre-internet, pre-electronic, prehistoric times. 

Another clarification is in order. The "source" is where the information can be found. The "citation" is the description of where the information can be found. These two terms are often used interchangeably. If you add a date or a place or a name to an online family tree, tell us where you found that information and give us enough of a description or link to actually see the document or record. If no document of record was used and you made up the information. Tell us. If you heard the information from a relative. Tell us. Otherwise, we have to go find the source ourselves. 

What about all this complicated citation mumbo-jumbo? If you have aspirations of writing for professional publications, be my guest. Learn all about commas, indentions, style, and everything else that goes along with publication. But don't expect that level of citation to exist in online family trees and don't tell me that your footnotes help me to believe what you write unless I can clearly see where to go to find the information. 

I hesitate to give a specific example because I do not want to denigrate any contributor to a major publication, but telling me that you got the information from such and such a book or record does not help unless you also tell me where you found it.