Hi, Diana.

I thought I would respond to your question about documenting sources... since
it is something I am always confronted with on a daily basis. I use the
internet for quite a bit of my everyday research process (whether genealogy
or otherwise).

First, if it is written (and you are reading it - online or otherwise) it has
an author. True, you may not know WHO the author is, but someone took the
time to write it, copy it from somewhere else to the web, or whatever.

In the case where I have no idea who actually wrote the material (could be an
"anonymous" website developer, a quotation from a new source, or simply the
captured pictures/pages from some other source), I simply relate as much
information about the site as I can. That includes the site's "home page"
title (if pertinent), the actual "page" citing where the material was found,
and then the URL of that page.

Second, and this is related to listing the URL, I have found that all to
often the page that I sited less than six months ago is GONE. I have
downloaded information from several of the Familytreemaker.com sites just to
find them "deleted" later on.

Unfortunately, that's the sense of things in this electronic world where
there is no control over content, control over updates, and/or control over
owner maintenance. Indeed, I did a search using Google the other day and over
HALF of the sites that it listed were "not found" when I selected them. This
is extremely frustrating, but, again, part of the package we have to work
with these days.

Hope this helps.

Jon

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