Ghosts in the Margins / Our Family / Source guide
The research hubs bring published documents and citations alongside each life. This guide explains how to follow a reference, compare accounts, and distinguish a source statement from a later interpretation.
A useful citation identifies both the work and the place within it.
The number printed on a book page can differ from the page number in a downloaded PDF. Covers, unnumbered pages and repeated scans can change that difference within a volume. Use the locator given for the particular passage.
An archive identifier, record group, register entry, sheet or image number helps locate the original. A cropped exhibit is a selected view; the source description should identify the record from which it came.
A quotation records a selected reading of a passage. A paraphrase summarizes it. A printed transcription of an earlier document remains a transcription, with its own author and publication history.
Searchable text, a checked passage and a published conclusion are different stages.
Software makes document text searchable. It can miss names, headings or columns. An extraction count describes pages processed, not pages read or findings verified.
A review records which selected pages or passages were checked against text or images, and who checked them. An automated assistant’s check is identified separately from a human review. Checking selected pages does not mean the whole book has been read.
A research assessment and permission to publish are separate decisions. A proposed update must address the person’s identity, the source and its limitations, privacy, reproduction rights and editorial review. The public hubs contain selected material approved for this collection; private working findings are not added automatically.
A later book may copy an earlier history or abstract the same record. Repeated statements are not necessarily independent support. Where accounts disagree, retain the separate readings and look for the underlying record.
Dates, places, households and source context help distinguish people with similar names. The two families’ research identities remain separate. A candidate match does not establish a person’s parents or change a family-tree connection.
A named personnel record and a unit’s operational report answer different questions. The military collection identifies which documents name a person and which describe the wider service context.
Explore the military collection ↗A person’s hub offers a printable packet and a bibliography of its published citations.
Follow the linked source discussion for the exact reference and any material qualification. Access and reproduction terms remain with the source holder. A bibliography can identify a document whose original is retained privately; it does not grant access to that document.