* For citation nerds

[ColeValleyGirl]

Evidence Explained: Third Edition vs. Fourth Edition.

I don't have a copy of the fourth edition yet -- waiting for an ebook to be available in the UK -- but will be interested to see how much it actually simplifies things. And whether the templates bear any resemblance to the ones I created for my own private use in v5 onwards...

[fhtess65]

Yes, I read through that post. Looks like the 4th edition marks a bit of a shift.

Curious to see if any bookseller in the UK other than Amazon (which I boycott) will have the book for sale. EE's publisher has already told me if I want it in Canada I'll have to buy it from Jeff Bezos's monolith.

I'm still not sure this new edition will convince me to return to ESM's citation style.

Evidence Explained: Third Edition vs. Fourth Edition.

I don't have a copy of the fourth edition yet -- waiting for an ebook to be available in the UK -- but will be interested to see how much it actually simplifies things. And whether the templates bear any resemblance to the ones I created for my own private use in v5 onwards...

[ColeValleyGirl]

Curious to see if any bookseller in the UK other than Amazon (which I boycott) will have the book for sale. EE's publisher has already told me if I want it in Canada I'll have to buy it from Jeff Bezos's monolith.

I'm still not sure this new edition will convince me to return to ESM's citation style.

I suspect my only option in the UK will be Amazon.

And ditto, but I want to check. I haven't embarked on redoing my sources with templates yet, so haven't backed any horse.

[t4ms]

Thanks for the post but no amount of convincing would ever see me use EE. It's hideous!

Tamara

[Gary_G]

I would love to get a look at the new 4th edition of the EE book, if it weren't so expensive. However; like Teresa, I'm in Canada and it almost seems like nothing seems to be published and sold here. That makes two strikes against it.

Based upon what I've heard and read, the 4th edition appears to be a repackaging/condensing of the same concepts as ed. 3. From my perspective, that's the 3rd strike...

I will admit that, to the extent that it documents some industry-standard citation formats, the 3rd edition book is a useful reference. However; having played extensively with trying to create templates for the citations in the book, I don't think it will ever be more than a reference for me. So; I can't see me buying the 4th edition.

A side-note...
One thing I've noticed is that EE actually has two radically different citation approaches that are evident from the EE website, but the book seems to promote only one. The one in the book tends to be a classic layered approach and I had some limited success with templating that style. The other, from the EE website, tries to more-or-less document the ad hoc hierarchy of data on any website. It seems to have come about to handle sources that don't fit the classical author-title-publisher source paradigm promoted in the book. It is possible to template that ad hoc structure, but nearly impossible to do it in a way from which one can automatically generate a meaningful Title for a source. That is; unless one makes a special template for each site. Generating a meaningful source is a must for me, since I use a splitting approach for my sources and need a meaningful and unique source name. So; I've modified the layered approach by borrowing from several other citation styles and now appear to be able to generate almost all my citations using a single template. If FH7 had a free-form template to use for the exceptions, I believe I'd have everything I need. Just another reason why I probably won't buy the EE 4th edition.

[fhtess65]

Jenny and Andy at CiteBuilder have added their versions of EE 4th ed templates to their site and they're not behind the paywall. https://cite-builder.com/basic/#. Just click on the first option. I haven't tried any yet, but at least it's good to get an idea. Great they made it available for everyone - I have a sub to their site, but I know not everyone will.

I would love to get a look at the new 4th edition of the EE book, if it weren't so expensive. However; like Teresa, I'm in Canada and it almost seems like nothing seems to be published and sold here. That makes two strikes against it.

[Gary_G]

Thanks, Teresa;

I'll pop over and have a look at the templates. There could be some aspects that might be interesting.

By the way...
To develop my template; I went back to the basic, " Who?, What?, When?, Wherein?, Where is the source?", to determine the basic and absolutely "must have" fields and then incorporated those into a template having just, "document, website, source-of-source" layers. The template turned out to be VERY flexible. I've been throwing rocks at this all-singing-all-dancing template and haven't been able to break it or find something that really couldn't be cited; even artifacts. It works well enough that I'm worried about what I missed...

[Gary_G]

Teresa;

I had a quick peek at the templates. I can immediately spot one serious limitation. The T10 templates lack enough granularity in the data fields to be able to generate a meaningful FH7 Title. This was one of the issues that I mentioned in my recent post regarding EE style. As in previous EE books; key data that doesn't fit the "book" paradigm seems to get dumped into an unstructured field. Because it's unstructured, the relevant items can't be extracted. That data just happens to often include data that is needed to automatically create an FH7 title for a given record. However; at least mentioning the T10 situation in the 4th ed. book is an improvement.

I still question the need for a dozen templates to handle basic citations. I think, with a bit of thought and some relaxation of existing overly strict punctuation/style rules, EE could have reduced the number substantially.

[AdrianBruce]

I notice from Chris Paton's blog that Evidence Explained 4th edition is available through its publisher in an ebook format. See https://genealogical.com/store/evidence ... h-edition/

It's $47.50 for the ebook as against $65.00. The ebook format is something that's available only on the Bookshelf platform - no, me neither - but it's described as a fixed page format, which will preserve the page numbering and format of the printed version. Plus, unlike a PDF, which would also preserve those things, there's no file that can be passed on. Further details in an FAQ from that URL.

I see no evidence that it can be used on Android - which would presumably be impractical anyway if the page looks exactly like the printed version. I'm also unclear from the FAQ how it's available in the UK as it talks about different countries.

[Gary_G]

Adrian;

Up until this recent edition, I used to get the ebook from Amazon and read it using the Kindle viewer. With it, one could copy small sections of text, but generally it wasn't enough to be much use to me. To my knowledge, there never has been an actual PDF version. The fact that they've also moved to a proprietary viewer that is even more restrictive is enough, In itself, for me to avoid buying a copy.

As for the physical book... Teresa will also tell you that the shipping charges make it ridiculously expensive to have it shipped to Canada. I can only imagine what the cost would be in the UK. That is why I won't even consider the hardcopy book. The shipping costs more than the book.

[fhtess65]

The publisher REFUSES to ship outside the US. Says it has had bad experiences, so just have a copy shipped to an American friend/relative and get them to forward it to you

Offered the ebook, but it costs $70 Cdn...um, no. I love ebooks and do buy them (I have a Kobo), but I'm NOT paying that much money for something I can't hold in my hands.

Adrian;
As for the physical book... Teresa will also tell you that the shipping charges make it ridiculously expensive to have it shipped to Canada. I can only imagine what the cost would be in the UK. That is why I won't even consider the hardcopy book. The shipping costs more than the book.

[Gary_G]

I was unaware that they actually refused to send it. I just know that, in general, while there is no duty on books, the shipping costs to Canada from the USA are beyond ridiculous.

I once won a book on the Dear Myrtle forum. So, the book was free, but it cost the forum-owner more to ship it from Salt Lake to Calgary than it was worth. I felt so badly that I sent the forum-owner a donation to cover the shipping cost and have never ordered a book from the US since.

From my perspective, this situation may actually be a blessing in disguise. It highlights the there is a market niche that I hope some non-US author will fill. It would be a great deal of help to have a few genealogy books that were written with the non-US market in mind.

[fhtess65]

Given we share a border, it's criminal how much it costs to send stuff across it. Helen Osborn is one UK author who writes good genealogy books - Genealogy: Essential Research Methods (2012) and Our Village Ancestors (2021). I have the former and am hoping to get the latter sometime this year.

Helen's chapter on referencing in Genealogy : ERM is very helpful - at least it was for me. Sadly, it doesn't appear any AB libraries have a copy, though your library should be able to ILL a copy for you from BC.

Simon Fowler's Family History : Digging Deeper is also very good, but doesn't deal much with citation.

I also found Finding your Scottish ancestors : techniques for solving genealogy problems by Kirsty Wilkinson very helpful as much of the book is about methodology that can be applied to any country. I can't recall off the top of my head how much time she devotes to sources/citations - I can check at work today.

Teresa

I was unaware that they actually refused to send it. I just know that, in general, while there is no duty on books, the shipping costs to Canada from the USA are beyond ridiculous.

I once won a book on the Dear Myrtle forum. So, the book was free, but it cost the forum-owner more to ship it from Salt Lake to Calgary than it was worth. I felt so badly that I sent the forum-owner a donation to cover the shipping cost and have never ordered a book from the US since.

From my perspective, this situation may actually be a blessing in disguise. It highlights the there is a market niche that I hope some non-US author will fill. It would be a great deal of help to have a few genealogy books that were written with the non-US market in mind.

[Gary_G]

Thanks, Teresa.