Citation Quality
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RootsMagic lets you apply a quality rating to each use of your citations based on the industry-standard Elizabeth Shown Mills, "Process Map for Evidence Analysis", Evidence Explained: Citing History Sources from Artifacts to Cyberspace (Baltimore, Maryland: Genealogy Publishing, 2007).
From her discussion, Sources give us information from which we select evidence for analysis. A sound conclusion may be considered Proof.
To enter your quality ratings After careful analysis and evaluation of the associated source, you can enter a quality rating in each of three factors that best describes the results of your analysis.
You will see the 3 Quality options when you are editing a citation on the edit person form. Just click each item and select the appropriate value from the drop list that appears.
Source
- Original - This source is in its first recorded form
- Derivative - This source is extracted, transcribed or otherwise derived from the original
- Don't know
Information
- Primary - This information was provided by someone with firsthand knowledge of the person or fact
- Secondary - This information was provided by someone with secondhand knowledge of the person or fact
- Don't know
Evidence
- Direct - This source answers the research question by itself
- Indirect - This source is relevant, but needs additional information
- Negative - This source is missing information that it should contain
- Don't know
The quality is at the citation use level, since the same source (or even the same citation) can have a different quality depending on what it is used for. For example, a birth certificate could have a different quality depending on whether it was used for the person's birth, or used for the father's place of birth.