Genealogical Methods/Significance of Reference Verification

Reference verificaiton in genealogy is important in and of its self. That is, its important that we be confident that references cited a) exist, and b) contain the information that's attributed to them.

However, the true significance of reference verification lies elsewhere. As an overall statement, genealogists are not very good at explaining "how they know what they know". Information is diligently sought, and inserted into family histories. Often much effort goes into tracking down a piece of information, or developing the reasoning underlying a conclusion about a date of birth (for example). Yet much more often than not, the sources used to develop that information or the reasoning, are not provided. If you search family lineages presented on Ancestry (for example) its likely that nine out of ten entries will lack any indication about where the data is coming from, or at best, reference someone else's genealogical work. Here, the attitude seems to be "That's a lot of work. I found this out, its true, and I don't need to explain where it came from."

Yes, recording where information comes from is a lot of work. But its less work than having to redo the research because you've forgotten how you got that information, or when you find that you have several answers for the same question, and don't know why you thought one of them was right. Again, look at Ancestry family lineages. Often you will find that several hundered people have entered information about any given person. For any given individual where you have a few hundred records, you'll typially find a mixture of DOB's, DOD's, parents and spouses. And more likely than not few if any of these entries will explain what the information is based on. Without that information, its impossible to determine which if any of these records is right. Anything you picked would be little better than a guess.

So, in order to select among many choices you need to know what sources were used in developing those lineages. No sources, and you can't choose among them.

However, that's not the real significance of reference verification. The real significance of including or leaving out the citations, is that it speaks to your credibility. If references are cited, you can in theory, check them out. They tell you that someone had a basis for what ever conclusion they reached, and they've giving you the basis for verifying their sources, and ultimately for validating their conclusions. If they don't provide the sources, you can't do any of that, and your own work will suffer.

An adage that applies here is:


 * You don't know what you know unless you know how you know it

The corrollary to that being


 * If you don't tell people how you know what you know, they probably aren't going to believe you