Hayes Lowe
Whys of not sourcing.
Mon Apr 9 15:25:23 2001


Sourcing rather depends on the author's intent for the book: is it to be a historical reference work, or is it to be good reading; is it to be considered a primary resource tool, or a compilation/record of available data...a starting point for "real" research; is it for the layman, or for the academic community. You get the idea.

I don't know the works that you speak about, so I can't say one way or the other for those.

My pet peave is a reference work with *missing* source references. If a work has none, that's OK...it was intended to have none. But a work that has most things referenced, but then has key statements unreferenced, makes the whole work suspect. I can't tell you how many times that I have run into this (especially in Masters and Doctoral dissertations) while researching for my book on the battle at Sipsey River.