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(More customer reviews)This book fulfills a long needed addition to Mills' 1997 effort Evidence! Citation and Analysis for the Family Historian. Genealogy, as a discipline, has practioners that range from the casual gedcom collector to professional and academic researchers. For the last several decades, there has been a strong movement toward standards in genealogical research, in an effort to gain credibility on par with historians and other social sciences. At 816 pages (884 total pages), reading it from cover to cover is a bit like reading a dictionary, which few of us rarely do.
Judging from the buzz on various mailing lists before the book was released, you might expect that Mills was providing merely a reference manual or citation style manual for genealogists. However, the title, Evidence Explained, hints at more. Throughout the text, Mills uses the term "historian" over the use of the term, "genealogist." This shift in terminology is perhaps in keeping with the direction that the discipline is moving. Additionally, Mills devoted the first chapter to the subject of evaluating sources and evidence contained within them, a subject that still causes confusion for many experienced family historians (i.e., genealogists).
For those of us who would rather read a novel than a style manual, I recommend reading the first two chapters in their entireity. Both chapters cover general concepts that are prominent in genealogical research and citation writing. The remaining twelve chapters deal with the various types of historical records or artifacts encountered while researching family history. Starting with Chapter 3, Mills provides the historian with a section, entitled "QuickCheck Models." These models provide a simple, "view-at-a-glance" template for the various types of records referenced by that chapter. The "QuickCheck" models are easy to locate, appearing on pages with a greyed background to help them standout while looking at the the edge of the book.
To aid navigation, each chapter's title page contains a table of contents to the QuickCheck Models. However, supplying a TOC for these brief sections seem unnecessary. The models, themselves, appear one to a page with the desciption (or title) of the model at the top of the page. Rather, the user of the style manual would have been better served if a TOC had been created for the main text of each chapter, which is much more detailed and offers information not provided by the models.
Paragraphs within each chapter are identified by a two level numbering system (chapter, paragraph). Mills mentioned that she modeled her manual after the Chicago Style Manual (CSM), which also uses this numbering schema for navigation purposes. Like CSM, Evidence Explained opens each paragraph with a run-in subhead identifying the subject matter of the paragraph. However, nowhere is there a reference or cross-index to the paragraph numbers, themselves, making them somewhat superfluous.
Each chapter contains a section called, "Guidelines and Examples." This is the major text explaining issues related to each category of sources. Don't forego reading this part of the text in favor of just using the models. Here, I recommend that the researcher employ the JIT approach to reading. JIT (meaning "just in time") is a term borrowed from manufacturing whereby parts to make a product are ordered and shipped to the factory "just in time" to assemble the product, saving time and the expense of warehousing a large inventory of parts. When searching for the most appropriate style template to use--and once you have identified the source type--,read the sub-section labeled "Basic Issues" within the "Guidelines and Examples" section. Then, proceed to the paragraph that describes the specific type of source. (This is where a chapter TOC would have helped.) Reading the "Basic Issues" section will help the researcher see how concepts in citations relate to that specific source.
Another feature that Mills employed in the text was the use of icons to indicate explanations of citations related to microfilm, computer databases, etc. Mills did not explain this feature in her preface, perhaps thinking that no explanation was necessary. For an example of how these icons are used, refer to page 347. As a matter of fact, the lack of an introduction and orientation to the book seems to be its greatest weakness. Any reference manual--and this book certainly fits that description--should offer the reader an orientation to the conventions used within.
Finally, Mills provided two indexes to the manual. The first is the general index. It offers the best way to apply the JIT principle, sometimes directing you to multiple examples on separate pages. In absence of a chapter table of contents, the index is your only resource for navigating the book. The second index is to the QuickCheck Models only. It is redundant of the general index, which also includes references to the QuickCheck Models. When searching the index(es), be certain that you know which index you are purusing. The two indexes do not have separate page headers.
Despite the above-mentioned weaknesses, it is a monumental and welcomed improvement over earlier works and, no doubt, will help us all become better writers of our family research. I can still highly recommend it.
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Evidence Explained: Citing History Sources from Artifacts to CyberspaceEvidence Explained is the definitive guide to the citation and analysis of historical sources.It begins with a simple question: Why do we invest so much of our energy into the citation of sources?Followed by the intriguing answer:Because all sources are not created equal.As a citation guide, Evidence Explained is built on this simple question and answer.According to the author, there are no historical resources we can trust at face value. Records simply offer evidence, and their assertions may or may not be true. To decide what actually happened, we must understand those records. To analyze that evidence and judge what to believe, we also need particular facts about those records.Thus, Evidence Explained has two principal uses: it provides citation models for most historical sources especially original materials not covered by classic citation guides such as The Chicago Manual of Style. Beyond that it can help us understand each type of record and identify each in such detail that we and our readers will know not only where to go to find our source, but, equally important, the nature of that source so that the evidence can be better interpreted and the accuracy of our conclusions properly appraised.Highlights Covers all contemporary and electronic sources not discussed in traditional style manuals, including digital, audio, and video sources Explains citation principals and includes more than 1,000 citation models for virtually every source type Shows readers where to go to find their sources and how to describe them and evaluate them Teaches readers to separate facts from assertions and theory from proof in the evaluation of evidence.Most importantly, Evidence Explained discusses source citations for every known class of records, including microfilm and microfiche, and records created by the new digital media:WebsitesBlogs Digital books and journalsDVDsCDsAudio filesPodcastsEveryone Needs This Book-Carry it around and consult it for the correct citation of any source you come across-Keep it constantly at your side to help you identify sources-Use it to evaluate digital and Internet sources-Make it your standard for citing sources and evaluating evidence in your day-to-day research
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