Thou Shalt Not Steal, or Thou Shalt Be Outed

Christmas seems like a good time to talk about not stealing from other blogs or on-line material in general, but Kerry Scott has already done it better than I could hope to do. Good comments there too.



Harold Henderson, "Thou Shalt Not Steal, or Thou Shalt Be Outed," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 25 December 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Good lessons in NGS Magazine April-June 2012

You could get a darn good genealogical education just by reading every issue of the National Genealogical Society Magazine for a few years. The lessons are readable, bite-size, and engaging. This quarter, four how-to pieces stood out for me:

* Debbie Mieszala on plagiarism and how not to commit it. BTW, although I have heard rumblings to the contrary, there is NOTHING about blogging that makes plagiarism either necessary or acceptable. By linking as well as giving credit, bloggers can if anything credit their sources more easily than pen-and-paper writers can.

* J. H. Fonkert on using newspapers to (almost literally) bring an ancestor back to life. His own grandfather provides the example. I wanted to say that this works best when the ancestor is engaged in work that actually appears in the newspaper, but we won't know until we look!

* Kathy Petlewski on immigration research, a very helpful piece with a sequel promised. I especially appreciated the discussion of oft-neglected ports of entry Galveston and New Orleans. One point I would add: the several "waves" of immigration in US history have had their roots in politics. Going back to the presidency of John Adams, changing tides of political opinion (including episodes of fear and racism) have changed the immigration laws and often determined when a "wave" of immigration began and ended. (Those waves in the pool where we research aren't natural, dude. There's a wave machine out there.)

* Patricia Walls Stamm with a solid article on research planning. I appreciate these, because this is something I struggle with on a daily basis.

I also enjoyed records-oriented pieces by Claire Prechtel-Kluskens (did you know there may be Compiled Military Service Records for your Civil War ancestor that did not get filed in his "jacket"? and how to find them?), Bryna O'Sullivan on using Confederate pension applications in African-American genealogy, and Harold Hinds on autograph books, yet another underused genealogical resource.

This magazine alone is worth NGS's annual dues -- and as readers here know, NGS offers many other benefits as well!



All in NGS Magazine, vol. 38, no. 2 (April-June 2012):
Debbie Mieszala, "Stop, thief! A plagiarism primer," 17-20.
J. H. Fonkert, "The threshing engine: Newspapers breathe life into a photo," 25-31.
Kathy Petlewski, "Reference Desk: An overview of immigration records," 48-53.
Patricia Walls Stamm, "Targeted Research Plans," 44-47.

Harold Henderson, "Good lessons in NGS Magazine April-June 2012," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 21 May 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Indiana Genealogist March 2010

The new quarterly issue of Indiana Genealogist has some treats -- a nice going-away present from editor Annette Harper, who has acquired a job.

Judy Lee transcribed a Civil War journal of unknown origin and has found evidence to attribute it to Gillis J. McBain (1829-1914), a Canadian who died in Idaho. In between, he served as sergeant and sergeant major in Company G of Indiana's 73rd infantry. Like most 19th-century diaristsm McBain is laconic and rarely tells us what we most want to know. Nevertheless he still conveys the soldier's unique mixture of boredom, discomfort, and terror. As a postscript, there' s a shorter journal of his train travel west in 1882.

James R. Miller offers an introduction to philatelic genealogy in Indiana, which consists of using stamps and envelopes as evidence, not trying to determine the family tree of a given stamp. It reminded me uneasily of the old envelopes we destroyed as children in the name of "collecting" the stamps stuck to them.

Jay B. Wright does a clear and concise job of distinguishing between the related but distinct sins of plagiarism and copyright violation. You can do both, or neither, and you can also commit either one without committing the other. Read it, don't try it!