Matt Brown wrote:
"Cite your sources" is fine. "Provide
your sources," though, is not.
On many obscure topics, the sources WILL be difficult to locate. Any
attempt to turn this requirement into having to provide sources that
can be requested from the average library or online will remove a
large number of very credible but obscure sources - specialist
publications, limited circulation journals, and many other documents.
IMO, those would only be legitimate sources to cite if the subject
itself is obscure and known only to specialists. If it's a well-known
subject, it would make more sense to use mainstream sources on the
subject. If the obscure source is indeed important, it will at least
have been cited by someone else. If, for example, you find an obscure
source on the Holocaust that is not cited in any mainstream work on the
Holocaust, it would be original research to begin to build an argument
based on it. (If you thought mainstream Holocaust historians were
ignoring some obscure but credible and important source, that would be
an issue to take up with them; we're just here to report the consensus
in the field, not to create it.)
-Mark