Why Can’t I Wrap My Head Around Citations?

Now that I am on this path to produce high-quality genealogy research, I need to begin crafting source citations. I understand the reason behind doing so and would be happy to create them, but I freeze. My research has, in quite a few areas, stopped due to knowing that I need to create a citation and not knowing how.

I have watched webinars and read the first few chapters of Evidence Explained to try to learn how to create citations. I even paid to take an online course on the topic from Family Tree University and still don’t feel comfortable. In my frustration, I have now bought more books and guides and am about to begin the second of four courses for my NGS Certificate which is titled: Guide to Documentation and Source Citation. Though I have my doubts, I hope that I begin to feel more comfortable after this course.

I think that I freeze as I do not want to start creating citations incorrectly, use them as templates, then, at some point down the line, have to go back and correct all of them. I would very much like a guide similar to the one that Elizabeth Shown Mills wrote for Ancestry citations to be created for all of the newspaper clippings I find on FultonHistory.com.

Even though it is a little embarrassing to ask for help, I know that I need to do so. I think that I am going to post on the WNYGS Facebook Group and ask the collective for how to cite the newspaper article about Nelson D. Johnson’s death.