Donald A. Windsor
Documentation is the supporting of a statement with a document. I recently published a tutorial about it.
Windsor, Donald A. Bulletproof Documentation of Local History.
Self published. 2009. 40 pages.
My earliest lesson in documentation occurred in the third or fourth grade in a Catholic school. A naughty joke was circulating among the boys. It started with the question, "Who was the strongest man in the Bible?" Most persons would name Sampson. We would then tell them, "No. It was Moses." "Moses?", they would respond with disbelief. "How do you figure Moses was stronger than Sampson?"
We would answer (with impish giggles) "It says in the Bible that Moses tied his ass to a tree and then walked ten miles."
One day, the nun who taught us, overheard me conducting such a conversation and said to me, "Gosh, I read the Bible but I don't remember reading that Moses did what you described. Perhaps you would show me the exact passage, you know, chapter and verse."
Well, I looked through the early books of the Bible and could not find such a passage. After about a week, it became very clear to me that the Bible did not say that Moses tied his ass to a tree and walked.
When the nun confronted me requesting a progress report, I had to admit my failure. She then admonished me and demanded that I stay after school and write a thousand times, "I must not misquote the Bible."
After a few hundred, she interrupted me and asked what I learned from my experience with shoddy documentation. I responded with suitable contrition, "I must not misquote the Bible." She was pleased and released me from my sentence (actually, hundreds of sentences).
The lesson stuck with me. Everything anyone says, other than about their own personal experiences, must be documented. This is especially true in local history, where so many folks expound on events that occurred long before they were even born. They got their information someplace. So tell the reader their sources. Document it!
