citing newspaper articles

[eventide]

I've been spending the last few months sourcing all my materials and so far have been 'lumping' most everything except vital records. Plus I am trying to keep things simple in case I have to do them all over again at a later date.

I am at the point where its time to start sourcing all my newspaper articles, largely found on newspapers.com and wonder if lumping is the right thing to do here. I am starting to lose sight of things so I'd like to see what others do.

I have close to 500 articles so I want to try and get it right

My really big question is - most of the articles are about one person- so does it pay to lump the sources? and my assumption is that if I do lump them together then the only info in the source is the Name of the Publication and a reference to newspapers.com.

[Dennis J. Cunniff]

Re: citing newspaper articles

My really big question is - most of the articles are about one person- so does it pay to lump the sources? and my assumption is that if I do lump them together then the only info in the source is the Name of the Publication and a reference to newspapers.com.

You should decide if you want to attach the source to the source citation. If you do, then you ought to keep it one article = one source.

If you are lumping, and not attaching a copy of the source to the source citation, so that it's one newspaper = one source, you ought to include details in the detail field so that you don't wind up only with a reference to newspapers.com. For example, you would have one source = The New York Times, another source = The Tarrytown Argus, and with the details include date of publcation and page number. For a newspaper, the fields in a source citation might include Title, Locality, and Repository (for example The Inquirer, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, newspapers.com) with the date of publication and page number in the detail field.

[eventide]

Re: citing newspaper articles

Right- and if I lump I will most certainly add citation details, like Title, page number and date in the details field - if that's what you mean.

Most of the newspapers are NY centric so I probably have no more than 15 newspapers and 90% of the articles come from the same 3 or 4 newspapers.

I've lumped everything else so I don't know whether I should stick with what I am doing or not. I think I am too far in the weeds and not experienced enough to know what to do.

[Frank Zwolinski]

Re: citing newspaper articles

I've been spending the last few months sourcing all my materials and so far have been 'lumping' most everything except vital records. Plus I am trying to keep things simple in case I have to do them all over again at a later date.

I am at the point where its time to start sourcing all my newspaper articles, largely found on newspapers.com and wonder if lumping is the right thing to do here. I am starting to lose sight of things so I'd like to see what others do.

I have close to 500 articles so I want to try and get it right

My really big question is - most of the articles are about one person- so does it pay to lump the sources? and my assumption is that if I do lump them together then the only info in the source is the Name of the Publication and a reference to newspapers.com.

My way of doing this is to use the newspaper article as a specific source and use that source for everyone mentioned therein. However, in addition to citing the source I always use an image of the article in the multimedia for that source. In fact, I do that with every source I use, that way someone does not have to search out the original source material (unless they want to) to see where the information came from and how it was derived.

My two cents,
Frank

[eventide]

Re: citing newspaper articles

Thanks for your two cents Frank!

I too always add an image of the article as well - in fact I usually attach the whole page. Which means if I lump, then the source will have a lot of images attached to each. And if I choose not to lump then I have a lot of sources. I'm probably making too big a deal of this. I should probably just pick one and run with it.

[Michael Talibard]

Re: citing newspaper articles

This is an old chestnut:

... if I lump, then the source will have a lot of images attached to each.

And yes, that is awkward.

And if I choose not to lump then I have a lot of sources.

I have never understood why anyone thinks that is a problem.

[Dennis J. Cunniff]

Re: citing newspaper articles

I have never understood why anyone thinks that is a problem.

I see the wisdom of many sources if you attach an image, and I see the wisdom of attaching an image if it's a newspaper article.

But it seems ridiculous to have a separate source for each page of a book.

So I think decisions on lumping need to be made judiciously rather than being an across-the-board answer.

Of course, your mileage may differ...

[eventide]

Re: citing newspaper articles

I thought about this all last night and until I saw your messages was about to go back and lump.


Wondering why you think it more awkward than going through a bunch of sources? Since I already went down that path with Census and Book records, what's the wisdom behind attaching only one image to a source? I don't plan on changing all that now.

But perhaps news articles are different....which is why I started the thread.

[Blaise A. Darveaux]

Re: citing newspaper articles

I see the wisdom of many sources if you attach an image, and I see the wisdom of attaching an image if it's a newspaper article.

But it seems ridiculous to have a separate source for each page of a book.

So I think decisions on lumping need to be made judiciously rather than being an across-the-board answer.

Of course, your mileage may differ...

For a book, it's easy. I scan the pages from the book that I use into a multipage PDF. When I cite the source for a person, I put the page number that they appear on in the detail field.

So, the source Type is Book. The whole book is one source with fields like Title, Date, Author/Editor, Publisher, etc. The detail is the page number, which is the only thing I enter after adding the citation to each smidgeon of data. The PDF is added once to the multimedia for the source when the source is created.

[Susan Freas Rogers]

Re: citing newspaper articles

Wondering why you think it more awkward than going through a bunch of sources? Since I already went down that path with Census and Book records, what's the wisdom behind attaching only one image to a source? I don't plan on changing all that now.

I am a "lumper." On the debate between either many sources vs. many images attached to a source, I vote for many images attached to a source, if for no other reason than I am constantly referencing my Source list, and I simply can't imagine having dozens of (for example) 1850, 1860, 1870, etc etc census sources clogging the list because each person's entry got their own source. I know how to sort my Source list, and how to search it, to find a source when I need it, but still, the idea of many duplicates of essentially the same source is way beyond my idea of a manageable list.

The multi-media pane in a Source, however, is a something I don't refer to quite as often, so having multiple images attached to it is not an issue for me. And that's because of how I name my image files. All of my images are identified by "Last First b### [type of record] Src##" and filed in a family surname folder. (b### stand for birth year if it's a repeated name within the family).

So, when I attached a file to its Source, I just drag it into alphabetical position in the Multimedia pane. And when I'm in that pane, I know who I'm looking for, so it's easy to scroll immediately to that person and double-click to open that image for him/her.

I suppose if you label your files differently, it might be more of an issue to have a great many images attached to a Source.

[eventide]

Re: citing newspaper articles

And do you lump all* sources or are you judicious in what you decide to lump? I'm not sure I see a reason to lump vital records for example - but wondering about newspaper articles..

[Kim]

Re: citing newspaper articles

I think you have to decide what works for you, and it sounds like you are comfortable with lumping.

I am not a lumper. I attach images to all of my sources; one source per document. That means each page of the census gets a separate source UNLESS one of my families of interest is split between two pages. In that case, they both are part of the same source.

I also keep my one source going regarding newspaper articles. I guess it's more a one newspaper page per source, because in the rare event there are 2 articles of interest on the same page, they get attached to the same source.
Books are a little different. I frequently use yearbooks as sources, and keep only one source per yearbook, attaching all relevant photos to that source.

I'm like Michael in that I don't see a problem with many, many sources in my database. To me, it is much easier to find what I want that way.