Genealogy: Documentation

In my last post Genealogy: Citing Sources, I said that I would mention other good reasons for citing the sources of your information when doing your Genealogy research.

The reason is documentation.

What is documentation?

Documentation is the way in which you prove the accuracy of your genealogical information. Citations (good ones) are an important part of the documentation that supports the accuracy of your facts.

Having proof that your facts are accurate and true is important. YOU need to to know that your facts are accurate. A fact that can't be proven is a guess and has no real standing. To establish a clear, proven line of descent in a family tree, you need to show documentation that is clear and without contradiction.

Beyond the importance of documentation to you, your work may (and likely will) be looked at, examined, and possibly referenced by others who are doing similar research. For their sake as well as your own, you want your conclusions to be as accurate as possible - which requires documentation.

Of course, not all information sources are equal when it comes to their us as documentation for a given fact.

Ideally, you'd like to have original, official, written documents to support a fact. ie: A birth certificate, marriage certificate, death certificate, original census forms, etc. Even more ideally, several documents which support each other should be used. The ideal isn't always possible but IT IS something to strive toward.



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