[WikiEN-l] Looking up death dates in government death records: original research?

[Sam Blacketer]

On 4/30/07, Matthew Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> 2) Are such lookups in SSDI legitimate sourcing for articles, or are
> they original research?  I incline towards the latter, since there is
> a leap between getting a name and making the decision that it is the
> same person that feels like more of one than we should be making
> without support from a source.

I would have thought that it is original research. The SSDI is by
definition a primary source; the fact that it happens to be fairly
easily available does not make it a 'published' source. Identifying
someone in the index by reference to their name and other known facts
(eg residence and birth date) is going into the primary sources to do
your own research.

Put it like this - if someone in there is notable, then their death
would have been noticed (from the SSDI at the very least) by some
proper secondary source.

-- 
Sam Blacketer
London E15