Citation, Acknowledgement and appropriate behaviour

In a posting on the much discussed "Medieval Lands", Douglas Richardson
commented on quoting sources and giving acknowledgements. I will try to
avoid the heat that debate is producing by recasting my question in
another form.

During June, as a result of a web search, I became aware of a
posting by John Brandon about Sir Alexander Temple's second wife. His
posting mentioned documents that are catalogued in "Access to
Archives".

It is likely that if I write anything in future about Sir Alexander
Temple's second wife, I will provide a reference to Access to Archives
(or possibly to Staffordshire Record Office) since this will guide the
reader to the contemporary document which offers the evidence.

I would expect to include an acknowledgement to John Brandon, although
this could be as part of a list of acknowledgements, might not be
specific and would not mention his posting to this group.

I would like to invite discussion (or instruction) from group members
on what is regarded as appropriate behaviour in this area.

Brad Verity...

Dear John,

I also get somewhat confused when citing sources. From what I
understand, secondary sources should be cited if you are using
conclusions that their authors have reached. Otherwise, if the
secondary sources simply point you to primary and other sources, then
it's not necessary to cite them.

Peter Stewart...

Well said, Todd. This is one of the reservations I alluded to recently about
the Henry Project in relation to peer-reviewed standards of scholarship.

Before giving an example, let me say unequivocally that the following
apprears to be an unusual lapse on Stewart Baldwin's part, and that in my
view it does not by any means indicate a systematic problem in his research.
I am sure that it will be corrected quickly and that a similar "big no-no"
will not occur again, especially after a public reminder.

The page for Foulques I le Roux (not "le Reux" as the heading has it) starts
out with the statement: "Foulques (Fulco) first appears as a witness to a
charter of count (later king) Eudes, abbot of of Saint Martin de Tours, in
April 886 [BEC 30 (1859): 431-3]."

The reference cited is in error. The 1859 volume of _Bibliothèque de l'Ecole
de chartes_ is number 20, not 30, and pages 431-3 in this are part of a
review by Eugène de Certain of the fourth issue in the series _Mémoires de
la Société archéologique de l'Orléanais_. This has nothing whatever to do
with Saint-Martin de Tours, Eudes or Count Foulques I of Anjou (see

The intended reference is to BEC 30 (1869), where pages 431-3 are part of
the major (i.e. important) article 'Les Invasions normandes dans la Loire et
les pérégrinations du corps de saint Martin' by Emile Mabille. The document
that was meant to be cited in the Henry Project also has nothing whatever to
do with Count Foulques I of Anjou in my opinion, but Karl Ferdinand Werner
(mis-)identified him as a witness to this particular charter that Mabille
(mis-)dated April 886 (instead of 887, see

The trouble here is that Karl Ferdinand Werner made exactly the same error
in citing the charter in his study of Foulques in 'Untersuchungen zur
Frühzeit des französischen Fürstentums (9.-10. Jahrhundert)', I-III. _Die
Welt als Geschichte_ 18 (1958) 256-289 at p. 284 in the first note on
mentions of Foulque, Annexe 1. The 17th witness after Eudes was named Fulco,
and supposed by Werner, on the flimsiest grounds and without due research
into other charters of Saint-Martin from around the same time, to be
Foulques I of Anjou as a youth.

However, the point for now is that if the reference had been verified the
typo in Werner's citation would have been corrected, not copied.

Peter Stewart

Stewart Baldwin...

I have now reexamined Werner's article on the early counts of Anjou
(which I had temporarily misplaced through misfiling), and I have to
agree that Peter was correct in criticising my sloppiness in using
Werner's article for my Henry Project page on Fulk I of Anjou. While
I don't recall exactly what happened in this case, I believe that I
probably did go to the charter cited by Werner (easily available at
the Gallica site), but that the only pages of BEC 30 which I checked
were pages 431-3, to verify Werner's statement that a "Fulco" did in
fact sign a charter of Eudes (Odo), and that having verified that BEC
30: 431-3 said what Werner claimed, I copied his year of publication
without checking any other pages. This was very sloppy on my part,
because "BEC 30: 431-3" by itself is not a correct citation, and I
should have at least checked the full article itself to get the full
citation and to see the context in which the charter was cited (and I
should also have caught this problem later on while proofreading). I
should also have discussed the fact that the conclusions (and
chronology) depended on accepting Werner's identification of the Fulco
in the earliest charters cited.

I acknowledge that giving bibliographic citations in a consistent form
is not a strong point for me, and I should also warn that I have a
habit of often copy-pasting my citations from one page to another.
This saves time (and, I believe, reduces the total number of typos in
the long run), but if there is a typo in the bibliography of one of my
pages, the same typo is quite likely to appear for the source on other
pages. Also, in some cases where I did not have the exact citation
(either because I did not photocopy the title page or because my notes
only give a partial citation without the full title, or, in some
cases, simply because I could not currently locate my copy of the
article in my stacks of papers), I have sometimes completed the
citations using other bibliographies to which I did have access (or
from library catalogs in some cases). In addition, I maintain "want
lists" of articles which I have not yet seen, either typed in from
bibliographies or other citations, or even copy-pasted from websites,
which I then use when I visit libraries while travelling, and these
might eventually get copy-pasted in the same way when I get a copy of
the article. (I usually try to check this against the article itself
when I find it, but I don't always remember to do so.) While I
recognize the potential for spreading inaccurate citations in this
way, I am not sure that retyping each citation would be any more
accurate in the long run, and I would welcome suggestions on this, or
comments on the appropriateness of my ackowledged practice of taking
bibliographic citations from elsewhere when I have checked the source
but don't have the full bibliographical citation at hand for that
source. (My impression is that this is fairly common practice, but I
could be mistaken about this.)

As for the sin of directly citing items which I have not seen, my main
procedure for avoiding this has been to give indirect citations in the
form "A, citing B" (more common in the early versions of the pages
that others do not see), in which case checking source B has a high
priority for me (especially in those cases where I have access to
source B). It is not my practice to change the "A, citing B" notation
unless I have checked B, which is why I believe that the above
description of what happened is likely (although that is of course
still a poor excuse for my sloppiness in not taking a closer look).
In any case, I certainly hope that sloppiness of the above type is
rare in my work.

Stewart Baldwin

So using your example, if the post by John Brandon contained research
and conclusions made by him that Sir Alexander Temple's second wife was
Eleanor Roosevelt (I clearly haven't read the Temple posts), and he
discussed the A2A documents he used to reach that conclusion, you would
need to cite his post (John Brandon, 'Sir Alexander Temple's Second
Wife' [or whatever the title of the discussion thread was],
soc.genealogy.medieval discussion group, 19 June 2006 [or whatever the
date of his post was], in addition to citing the A2A documents you
looked at yourself.

If however the identity of Temple's second wife was already known, and
John Brandon was posting about the contents of the A2A documents that
mention her, it isn't necessary to cite to his post. Though you could
choose to include within the footnote you write that cites the A2A
documents a statement like "I'd like to thank John Brandon for bringing
my attention to this reference".

Tim Powys-Lybbe...

The old style of doing this was 'ex inform John Brandon', to be found in
one or two places. IIRC, in CP.

John Brandon...

Yep, very common in CP.

Though I'm a little curious why you will be writing about A. Temple's
second wife. Are you possibly the ODNB author of the Izaak Walton
sketch? (I emailed the ODNB about this correction a few weeks ago.)

It's okay with me if you want to write about it (and I certainly don't
ask to be a co-author), but I would like my name mentioned and a copy
of whatever you write ...

RJM...

I'm not sure how relevant this reply is to the topic I've raised, but
since you ask ...

Why would I write about Sir Alexander Temple? My wife would say it's
because I'm suffering from an obsession; I think I'd settle for saying
I find him interesting. Since I've already writen about him 3 times (2
published, the third under review) I think it's fairly likely that I
might do so again. Would I mention your name? Probably. Would I send
you a copy of what I write? I personally think this is asking too much,
but I'm willing to be tutored by others.

And no, I have no connection with the ODNB!

John Matthews

John Brandon...

Okay, good. Maybe the ODNB will published a correction and then you
can cite to that.

John Brandon...

The tone of this is not very pleasing, but maybe you wouldn't mind
sharing the references to your writings (articles or books?) on
Alexander Temple (or even any other articles you've written, etc.).

RJM...

Sorry, I didn't mean to be unpleasing. BTW, I meant my reply to you was
not relevant; I was not commenting on your reply to me. How easy it is
to write something that is ambiguous.

The two published articles appeared in Panorama, the Journal of the
Thurrock Local History Society. The first of these was "Two Local
Regicides" and appeared in Panorama 41. It has been republished on the
The second was published in Panorama 44 and was an edited version of
the notes I used for a talk to the society. This has not been
republished on the web, but there is a short meeting report at
There is a brief note on Sir Alexander and the advowson of Grays church
in Panorama 42.

John Matthews

Hope this helps.

Cheers, ----Brad

John Matthews