On many of my articles I have noted acknowledgements of people who have helped me. I say help, but I'll further explain. An article is my own creation. Generally, a discovery is made, some sort of relationship is proven. Or the identity of one person in a given location is proven to be the same as a person elsewhere, such as an English origins article. One writes the article to show this proven relationship. In order to do so properly, you need to "dot the i's and cross the t's," which means fill out all children for a couple, with possibly their children as well. I've only ever worked on my own family and therefore all my articles [save one] are about my own ancestors. So, after my discovery, I then need to do research on the collateral lines of those ancestors. It is then I look at other people's work. If someone has done a good job on a collateral couple, I'll double check their work, add in primary sources if needed, and footnote them if they are published. In the case where they are not published, such as an online family tree or written correspondence, I'll give an acknowledgement. This is to say, "I found this couple here first." I think it is only right and proper to give credit to others. However, when all is said and done, the work is completely and totally mine.
Here's my acknowledgements at the end of my Yeaton article:
I had a similar one for my Pinkham article and probably half of all the articles I've written. However, here's the acknowledgement that came back to bite me in the ass:
You'll note that the wording is slightly different. I forgot to add (or the editor took it off) that last sentence saying that all errors and hypotheses are mine. I also "said help in writing" when I should have just said thank you. I've been acknowledged in scholarly works by professors because as a librarian I gathered information for them. That doesn't mean I wrote their books for them. So, my thanks was that I contributed this article for my C.G. application. This was the judge's take:
So, you're telling me that a C.G. judge was either (a) so incompetent not to understand what an acknowledgment was; or (b) such a bitch as to use that as an excuse to torpedo my application. You'll notice that the quality of the work is not discussed.
In one of life's ironies the sixth volume of the Great Migration 1634-1635 was published in August of last year, after I received this letter. They use this very same article as a footnote in the Sturgis sketch. So, on the one hand I have scholars footnoting my work, yet that work was not good enough for the Board of Certification for Genealogists.
I agree that the BCG has a bizarre take on what "entirely the work of the applicant" means. I was recently informed that one can't have another person read and make comments on the kinship study, because then it is not one's own work. If that's the case, then nothing I wrote in graduate school is my own work, because it was all workshopped.
Posted by: Toniasroots | 12/07/2010 at 06:29 PM