[WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 27, Issue 10

[Justin Cormack]

On 4 Oct 2005, at 18:19, Geoff Burling wrote:
> Finding documents in Britain is half of the challenge: as I understand
> it, records of a given locale are scattered across the country -- &
> over the ocean to the US & beyond -- due to historical connections,
> accidents of history, vagarities of how family papers are disposed of,
> as well as previous researchers who did not try hard enough to  
> remember
> to return what they have borrowed.

Its not that bad. Although some stuff is dispersed, most isnt. It  
depends
what kind of records you are looking for to some extent. Before the 19th
century can vary, but most parish records are still where you would
expect I believe.

> However, Geni, you have touched on another matter. If the material
> cited is unpublished, then we can't use it in Wikipedia. The policy is
> that if you need to depend on unpublished primary material for an
> article, have your research published first in an appropriate forum
> (in your case, a local history journal or monograph), *then* quote
> from there. As burdensome as this may seem, having your research
> published elsewhere first helps Wikipedia to offer the assurance
> that at least one set of expert eyes has examined the material we
> are using.

I think if you have real source materials wikisource should be
sufficient.

Justinc