Source, Information, & Evidence

According to Evidence Explained by Elizabeth Shown Mills, ”sources are artifacts, books, digital files, documents, film, people, photographs, recordings, websites, etc.” (see page 24)  Information is the content of the source.  Evidence “represents our interpretation of information we consider relevant to the research question or problem.” (see page 25)  So in order to classify evidence we need both information and a research objective.  Even though the Genealogical Proof Standard (GPS) does not include a step to define research goals, I’ve included it as part of the Genealogy Research Process Map because it is implied.  Step one of the GPS states:

“We conduct a reasonable exhaustive search in reliable sources for all information that is or may be pertinent to the identity, relationship, event, or situation in question.”
The BCG Genealogical Standards Manual, page 1.

How do we know which sources to search if we don’t have a research objective?  The definitions of direct and indirect evidence also points to the need to have a defined research objective:

Direct evidence – relevant information that seems to answer the research question or solve the problem all by itself.
Indirect evidence – relevant information that cannot, alone, answer the question;
Negative evidence – an inference we can draw from the absence of information that should exist under particular circumstances.
Evidence Explained, page 25

Even the definition for negative evidence hints at a research objective.

So how can we set the citation quality value for evidence in RootsMagic or any other genealogy software unless we have a research objective?

A research objective can be in the form of a question, statement, or hypothesis.  The following are all valid research objectives:

• What was Worth Tucker’s birth date and place?
• Where was Worth Tucker born?
• Worth Tucker was born 30 Nov 1870 in Ashe County, North Carolina.
• Was Worth Tucker born in 1869 or 1870?

How specific the research goal depends on the researcher and what they want to discover.

In RootsMagic, a source can be associated with a person, family, or fact:

And for each citation of a source you can specify a value for citation quality for source, information, and evidence.  But to classify evidence, what is the research objective implied or otherwise?

Let’s say we have a book that we use as a source.  It was created by its author and is an original source.  The source information is entered in the Master Source section and appears in the Master Source List.  A specific page of that book is specified in the Source Details section and some information from that page is entered as part of the Source Detail Text.  This information then needs to be evaluated based on who provided that information: the informant.  If the informant was a participant or eyewitness, then we can say that the information is primary, otherwise it is secondary.  Now we come to evidence.  We take that piece of information and compare it to our research objective, but since we don’t have one we must infer it from what the citation is related to: person, family, or fact.  It is important to note that it is usually the researcher that should determine the research objective and not the software. 

Since we don’t have research objectives, only what the citation is associated with, then we must imply the research objective.  This can be tricky. 

Evidence for Fact Citation

Since a birth fact allows you to enter date, place, and place details does information in the source we are citing need to contain all of this information before we can say that it is direct?  Put another way, is the implied research objective:

What is the date, city, county, state, and specific place of Worth Tucker’s birth?

or it is

What is the date and place of Worth Tucker’s birth?

Do they both mean the same thing?  There is room for ambiguity.  Not to mention the fact that as a researcher, maybe I wanted the research objective to be a statement or a hypothesis:

Worth Tucker was born 30 Nov 1870 in Ashe County, North Carolina.

Depending on the fact, the software ask us to enter different information:

• Birth – date, place, place details
• Alternate Name – given names, surname, prefix, suffix, name type, nickname, date
• Education – date, place, place details, description
• DNA – DNA results
• LDS Baptism – date, temple, status, live/temple

One workaround for fact-based citations is to define a guideline that the citation quality can be marked as direct only if all possible entry fields for that fact type are filled in completely.  If a date or place is only partially filled in or the information doesn’t allow all fields to be filled in, then it is indirect.

Evidence for Person Citation

What would be the implied research objective for a citation associated with a person?

When you add a new person it asks for given name(s), surname, prefix, suffix, sex, and nickname plus some vital facts.  So I guess the workaround for this situation is to have the research objective be:

What is the complete name, sex, and optional nickname of Worth Tucker?

If the information from the source can answer all the parts, then it is direct; otherwise it is indirect.

Evidence for Family Citation

Now what about the implied research objective for a citation associated with a family?

What are the complete names of both parents and all children as well as the birth order of the children for the marriage of Worth Tucker and Florence Abby Pulsipher?

If the information in the source can answer all parts of the question, then the evidence is direct.

An Eye to the Future

Part of the reason for the current implementation in RootsMagic 4 and similar software could be the decades-old focus on research results and not research analysis.  My first genealogy software was a DOS version of PAF.  Before using that software, all research and any conclusions I came up with were done on paper.  Even the first versions of PAF only allowed you to enter a single date for birth, christening, death, and burial.  So the software was intended only to record the results of your research.  Modern genealogy software allows you to enter multiple facts/events of the same type and associate a source citation to it.  That way, you could have half a dozen birth entries containing different values or different levels of detail as the your research required. The software is able to keep track of ongoing research, and not just results.  I think genealogy software will continue to innovate and allow more and more research collection and analysis to occur in the software.  That is the direction that citation quality is pointing in RootsMagic 4 and the similar feature in Family Tree Maker 2009.  The next logical step is to allow the software to define research projects each with their own research objectives.  These research objectives would then be associated with source citations and citation quality therefore clarifying the use of the classification of evidence as direct or indirect.

As early as the 1997 book, Evidence! Citation & Analysis for the Family Historian, Elizabeth Shown Mills has covered the topics of citation and analysis.  It is this second item, analysis, that is the focus of this innovator award. In Evidence! we start to see the formation of the current classification for sources (as original or derivative) and evidence (as direct or indirect).  The BCG Genealogical Standards Manual published in 2000 supports the classification of sources (as original or derivative), adds a classification for information (as primary or secondary), and continues the classification of evidence (as direct or indirect).  These classifications remained unchanged in Professional Genealogy which was published in 2001.  By 2006 as seen on quick sheet, Evidence Analysis: A Research Process Map by Elizabeth Shown Mills we see the formation of a new evidence classification so in addition to direct or indirect we can classify evidence as negative evidence.  When Evidence Explained was published in 2007 it restated these same classifications for sources (original or derivative), information (primary or secondary), and evidence (direct, indirect, or negative).

The winner of the next innovator award not only supports Evidence Explained citation templates but has coded these professional analysis practices into their software in a way that is approachable to all.  So a big congratulations goes out to Bruce Buzbee and his RootsMagic team!

Let’s look at the implementation in more detail.

In RootsMagic 3, we had a way to specify the quality of a source but the feature in RootsMagic 4 is dramatically improved.

Here is the citation quality dropdown list from the Edit Citation Details screen in RootsMagic 3:

The list contains primary, secondary, questionable, and unreliable.

Compare that to the citation quality screen from RootsMagic 4:

As you can see, RootsMagic 4 supports separate classifications for source, information, and evidence and fully supports these classification following Evidence Explained.

You get to this screen by clicking the Quality button on the Edit Source screen:

The next closest competitor of this feature is Family Tree Maker 2009, but the software fails to acknowledge the existence of negative evidence:

I am not sure when each product officially released this feature. The best I can estimate is that Family Tree Maker 2009 was released the first of February 2009 and RootsMagic 4 the end of March 2009.  I was aware of this feature in RootsMagic 4 all the way back in July 2008.  Since RootsMagic 4 handles negative evidence, it gets the award.

I feel that this is a transformational innovation because as more genealogists and family historians at all skill levels use this common terminology, analysis will become more consistent and communication will become more clear.  Look for other genealogy software (desktop as well as online) to support citation quality following the genealogical standards in Evidence Explained in the near future.

There are some changes and additonal improvements that I would to see in the area of citation quality that I would like to address in future posts. This is truly an exciting time.  Genealogy software is moving more towards helping with reserach analysis and not just the recording of research results.  Thanks RootsMagic for being a leader in this area.

To see other ThinkGenealogy Innovator award winners, visit the winners page.

Earlier today I posted the following to the APG list on RootsWeb:

There exists confusion in the current genealogy literature on the definition of an original source.

For this discussion I would like to focus only on the definition of original source and not derivatives, common derivatives (transcript, extract, abstract), or derivatives that can be treated as originals (image copy, record copy, or duplicate originals). I want to focus on the source – the container, the person, the paper, the stone, the object. Not the information contained in it (as much as possible) and its classification as primary or secondary. Also I don’t want to focus on how that information relates to the research question (i.e. the evidence and whether it is direct, indirect, or negative).

The 4 main sources that genealogists can turn to for a definition of original source are: Evidence! (1997), The BCG Standards Manual (2000), Professional Genealogy (2001), and Evidence Explained (2007). But using these sources can be contradictory and confusing. Is this due to the refinement of the definition over the years?

Let’s look at some specifics.

Evidence!

On page 49 of Evidence! the word material is used instead of sources, but the definition is useful:
“Original material, as defined by the purist, is based on firsthand knowledge – be it oral or written.”
The main criteria identified is: firsthand knowledge

The BCG Standards Manual

As the GPS was formalized, The BCG Standards Manual defined original sources (see page 8 ) as:
“the person or record whose information did not come from data already spoken or written.”
The main criteria: first occurrence of information

Professional Genealogy

The next year, Professional Genealogy was published which includes Chapter 17, “Evidence Analysis”. On page 333, we find the definition of an original source as:
“In genealogical terms, original sources are those that meet two criteria.
They are made at or near the time of the event, and their informants are in a position to know the facts firsthand.”
So a two-pronged test must be passed in order for a source to be original.
Criteria: timeliness and firsthand knowledge

Evidence Explained

In 2007, the definition changes to focus on form as found in Evidence Explained. The research process map inside the front cover has “form” written under both original and derivative. We find a definition of original source in three places:
. page 24: “Original sources – material in its first oral or recorded form”
. page 826: “original source: a source that is still in its first recorded or uttered form.”
. page 828: “source: … Sources are broadly classified as either an original source (q.v.) or a derivative source (q.v.), depending upon their physical form.”
The main criteria: physical form

So it appears that now a single-question test would be sufficient to classify a source as original:
“From what was this source derived?”
If the answer doesn’t reveal another source, then it is an original.

In an APG discussion, Elizabeth Shown Mills indicates that “Original sources can have secondhand information.” An example is an original death certificate that contains primary information of the death but secondary information of the birth. A question that I haven’t seen answered is:
“Can an original source contain ONLY secondary information?”
What would be an example? If that case is true, then only the definition in Evidence Explained is useful. Otherwise you mix the classification of source with that for information.

Primary Source

Another point I want to bring out from Evidence Explained is the definition of primary source found on pages 22-23:
“PRIMARY SOURCE
. one created by someone with firsthand knowledge . one created at or about the time an event occurred Within this framework, contradictions abound between theory and practice, causing ambiguous analyses and unreliable conclusions.”

It appears that the reason primary source is discussed is to identify its weaknesses and show why original source is preferable in genealogy research.
The problem stems from the two-prong test of firsthand knowledge and timeliness. If a source came from someone with firsthand knowledge but was created long after the event in question, the test would fail. Or, if the source was create near the time of the event, but the informant had secondhand knowledge, then the test would also fail. The strength of the single test of physical form for an original source is its simplicity on focusing on the object that is the source and not the informant, his/her knowledge, or the information.

What is confusing is that what Evidence Explained defines as a primary source with its problems is the same definition that Professional Genealogy uses for original source.

My inclination is that this progression of definitions is a refinement of understanding over the years and that the current accepted definition of original source focuses only on physical form. And as the other three guides are revised, they will share the definition currently found only in Evidence Explained.

The Back Story

Now let me tell you the back story that produced this examination of the definition of original source. In a recent presentation aimed at teaching beginning researchers the Genealogical Proof Standard, the question came up as to whether a grave marker is an original or derivative source. In preparation for the presentation (and as part of a study assignment for the ProGen Study Group) I shared the two-pronged test defined in Professional Genealogy, Chapter 17. Because it was a double marker and the wife died three decades after the husband, the class questioned the timeliness part of the test. I sensed that there was still a little confusion on this point and have wrestled with this question since then. There has to be a way that beginners can confidently determine if a source is original or not.

As it so happens, this month’s ProGen Study Group assignment includes reading the first chapter of Evidence Explained. That is when I noticed the possible shift toward physical form and a single test. I had read the chapter a few times before, but now I saw it differently. Now a single test, that is something that I think beginners can understand!

So in the grave marker case, what would it be derived from? One answer could be nothing, in which case it is an original. In some cases a new grave marker is created to replace an old one. I don’t feel that happened in this case. It would be something to check out. When my mother passed away, we worked with the mortuary to design the grave marker and then months later it was created. We verified the paperwork and later the grave marker to make sure all information was as we expected. So, was the marker inscription a granite-carved extract from the original paperwork or more likely a duplicate original? In either case, things are less problematic and I feel comfortable classifying the grave marker as an original source.

Classifying Sources with Evidence Explained?

Something else I noticed in my latest browsing of Evidence Explained.
Chapter 5 deals with Cemetery Records and on page 207 is summarized the QuickCheck models which are grouped in three categories: Cemetery Office Records, Markers & Memorials (Originals), and Derivatives. So it appears in this case I don’t have to worry about things too much and can call the grave marker an original source because Evidence Explained classifies it as such.
I think that for beginners using Evidence Explained as a crutch is acceptable as they gain confidence is classifying sources using the physical form test. So my recommendation for beginners would be to 1) try to determine if a source is original or derivative on their own and come up with an answer, 2) look up the source in Evidence Explained and if original or derivative is specified compare it with their answer. If they don’t match, try to determine why it might be the other classification.

Other chapters that appear to at least partially classify sources as original or derivative (or image copy) are: Ch 6 – Census Records, Ch 7 – Church Records, Ch 8 – Local & State Records: Courts & Governance, Ch 10 – Local & State Records: Property & Probates, Ch 11- National Government Records, and Ch 12 – Publications (Books, CDs, Maps, Leaflets & Videos).

Too bad there is not a growing master list of record types with classifications as: original, derivative, image copy, duplicate original, and record copy.

Now, two hours later, I have down in words what has been swarming in my head for weeks. I look forward to learning from your understanding and experience.

Update:

Follow the discussion on the APG list.

A discussion about modern American genealogy cannot begin without first recognizing Donald Lines Jacobus.

“During his lifetime, Jacobus was widely regarded as the dean of American genealogists, and he is recognized as the founder of the modern school of genealogy in the United States.  On his death, he was described by his colleague Milton Rubincam, as ‘the man who more than any other single individual elevated genealogy to the high degree of scholarship it now occupies.’”  See National Genealogy Hall of Fame.

His many works include Genealogy As Pastime and Profession which was published in 1930.

In 1940, The American Society of Genealogists (ASG) was founded to “elevate the profession of genealogy to the same literary and scientific level enjoyed by history.”

In 1964, The Board for Certification of Genealogists (BCG) was founded by a few fellows from ASG, members of NGS and others.  The purpose of BCG was to “set scholarship standards for professional genealogists.”

Noel C. Stevenson was a lawyer and genealogist who tried to bring principles of evidence from the field of law to genealogy.  He proposed that genealogists follow the principles of Preponderance of the Evidence, a standard used in civil cases.  For the next two decades, genealogists used the POE although with a higher standard than used in law.

One of Stevenson’s important works was Genealogical Evidence: A Guide to the Standard of Proof Relating to Pedigrees, Ancestry, Heirship and Family History which was published in 1979.

Also in 1979, Gary B. and Elizabeth Shown Mills wrote an article for The Genealogical Helper titled, “How to Properly Document Your Research Notes.”  This helped spawn the idea of writing a citation guide specifically for genealogists.  Richard S. Lackey took up the project and published Cite Your Sources in 1980.

In 1997, the BCG dropped the use of POE and adopted the Genealogical Proof Standard. In that same year, Elizabeth Shown Mills published an updated citation guide, Evidence! Citation & Analysis for the Family Historian.  In 2000, the BCG published the GPS in the BCG Standards Manual.

In 2001, Professional Genealogy: A Manual for Researchers, Writers, Editors, Lecturers, and Librarians was published with Elizabeth Shown Mills as editor.

In 2007, Elizabeth Shown Mills’ work, Evidence Explained: Citing History Sources from Artifacts to Cyberspace, is published – almost 30 years from that first citation article published in The Genealogical Helper.  The first article was 5 pages whereas Evidence Explained contains 885 pages.

I am open to any other suggestions of what to include on this timeline.

I am excited for the chance to take if for a spin myself and see how it does for day to day use.

Instead of singing:

Que Sera, Sera,
Whatever will be, will be
The future’s not ours, to see

I sang:

Que Sera, Sera,
Whatever will be, will be
The future’s not hard to see

This personal joke has been used many times since then and has never failed to deliver a cheerful effect.

I think that the author and design leader, Bill Buxton, would agree that the “future’s not hard to see.” In his book, “Sketching User Experiences: getting the design right and the right design,” Bill stresses the importance of looking at least 5 years down the road when designing user experiences and adds:

Now most people say that you cannot predict the future, much less five years out. They use this as an excuse for not making the effort, or even contemplating it. I believe that this reflects a lack of training, technique, or responsibility on the part of design or management. (page 209)

He then goes on to quote William Gibson from an NPR interview on 30 November 1999:

… the future is already here. It’s just not very evenly distributed.

Buxton gives two examples. The first computer mouse was built in 1964 but didn’t reach widespread use until about 1995 – 30 years later. The idea for the CD came around 1965 but it wasn’t until 25 years later in 1990 that the industry reached $1 billion. From idea, to design, to prototype, to first production, to ubiquity takes time.

Bill then makes this statement that I would like us to consider:

If history is any indication, we should assume that any technology that is going to have a significant impact over the next 10 years is already 10 years old. (page 215)

 This made me wonder if this could be applied to genealogy software. What has happened over the last 10 years that could affect the design and innovation of genealogy software over the next 10 years?

At first nothing came to mind, but then I thought of Elizabeth Shown Mills’ book, “Evidence! Citation and Analysis for the Family Historian” which was published in 1997. In 2007, the much expanded “Evidence Explained: Citing History Sources from Artifacts to Cyberspace” was released. We are now beginning to see specific examples of Elizabeth’s work showing up in genealogy software. In a podcast interview by Dick Eastman, Elizabeth Kelley Kerstens indicated that the software Clooz version 2.x was influenced by handouts she received from Elizabeth Shown Mills. Another example is from a podcast by DearMYRTLE where she interviews Geoff Rasmussen about Legacy version 7. In this interview, Geoff gives a sneak peek of one of the major new features which is source citation following the standard set by Elizabeth Shown Mills. There is still much work that needs to be done in this area such as online databases providing better source citations. I talk about this in my previous post about Jumping Curves. So you see, the future is not so hard to see.

Another area that I want to point out is the Genealogical Proof Standard which was also created in 1997 by the Board for Certification of Genealogists. Other than its use in the certification process, you don’t hear much about it. But this standard is useful to researchers of all levels to help them get as close to the truth as possible. At some point genealogy software designers and developers will realize this and incorporate it into future genealogy software.

There are probably many more examples of ideas, technology, and methodology that exists today that will help us better see the future of genealogy software.

What things should be added to this list?

As a genealogy community, I hope we aren’t thinking:

Que Sera, Sera,
Whatever will be, will be
The future’s not ours, to see

Share your thoughts as the future is ours to see.  I hope that is not hard to see.

I like the fact the WorldVitalRecords geocodes all records added to their site.  Why you are at it, why don’t you add source citations in metadata/xml form following the conventions in Elizabeth Shown Mills book, Evidence Explained: Citing History Sources from Artifacts to Cyberspace? 

Currently source citation is hard.  When it is available, it is in text format that must be copied and pasted into your genealogy program.  But source citation is vital so that proper evaluation of evidence can be done and so that constant re-examination of the same records can be avoided.  If when you click on a document to download the image, the link was instead something like an rss link that has metadata with it (think rss enclosure tag) and if that xml format were a standard then genealogy software could read the information, add the image to the application, and add the proper source citation.  What could be easier for a user than every time a document image is downloaded from an online database, the source was automatically cited?  The software developers would be half way there as they would then just need to add a way to manually add the same information for offline sources. 

The first analysis that needs to be done with a source is to determine if it is original or derivative.  The metadata could include this information already.  The next step would be to have the metadata for derivative sources include the source provenance all the way back to the original.  Who would be in a better position to know that than the site owner who negotiated with the owner of the source content?  This identification would then only have to be done once correctly and it would save many family historians/genealogists from doing the same work and sometimes incorrectly. 

Now the metadata would also be available to search engines and special source searches could be created to find and aggregate the information.  Think about what Google, Technorati, Digg, del.icio.us, Facebook or others could do with this type of information.

1. Creating a source citation metadata standard. 
2. Being the first records site to metadata source cite all their content. 
3. Making it extremely easy to cite online sources. 
4. Creating a whole new way to search for records. 

Now talk about jumping curves!

Some of these ideas I have shared before in Expanded Vision of Genealogy 2.0.

Happy curve jumping.

Web 2.0

The term Web 2.0 has been around since 2004 and is defined by wikipedia as the:

“perceived second generation of web-based communities and hosted services — such as social-networking sites, wikis and folksonomies — which aim to facilitate collaboration and sharing between users”

There is much debate over the definition of Web 2.0 and what makes a website “Web 2.0″.  According to SEOmoz.org, some of the defining characteristics of Web 2.0 are:

• User generated and/or user influenced content
• Applications that use the Web (versus the desktop) as a platform, in innovative ways
• Similar visual design and shared functional languages
• Leveraging of popular trends, including blogging, social tagging, wikis, and peer-to-peer sharing
• Inclusion of emerging web technologies like RSS, AJAX, APIs (and accompanying mashups), Ruby on Rails and others
• Open source or sharable/editable frameworks in the form of user-oriented “create your own” APIs

Web 2.0 links:

• O’Reilly Radar - Web 2.0 Compact Definition: Trying Again
• SEOmoz’s Web 2.0 Awards
• WebTrends 2.0 - Web 2.0 Directory
• Pixel Acres - The Visual Design of Web 2.0
• Web Design from Scratch - Current Style in Web Design

Sample Sites:

• Flickr
• del.icio.us
• LinkedIn
• Wikipedia

Genealogy 2.0

When I search the internet for “genealogy 2.0″, I get a number of sites that talk about the application of Web 2.0 to genealogy.  These sites mention social networking and collaboration as key components of Genealogy 2.0.  One blog, The Plog: Pytlewski Log, states:

“traditionally genealogy 2.0 has only referred to the new internet based applications that are changing the way we collaborate as a genealogical community”

My view of Genealogy 2.0 is broader than Web 2.0 genealogy application or what I term, Web 2.0+Gen.  Maybe it is because I have developed both web applications and Windows client applications.  Maybe it is because I see so many areas for improvement and innovation in genealogy software and I don’t want to wait around for Genealogy 2.5 or 3.0.  Or maybe it is just the developer in me that wants to avoid tight coupling. But pairing Genealogy 2.0 with Web 2.0 excludes genealogy software that is not web-based.  It also seems to focus too much on what Web 2.0 is and not what Genealogy 2.0 could be.

Genealogy 2.0 links:

• Genealogy 2.0
• Family Matters

Sample Sites:

• FamilyLink
• Geni
• FamilyPursuit

Expanded View of Genealogy 2.0

Many of these ideas are not new, but have been in the genealogy community for years.  The time is ripe for them to materialize as software that will aid genealogists and family historians to do things that they have never been able to easily do before. 

An expanded view of Genealogy 2.0 includes the following characteristics:

• Social networking 
• Collaboration during research, analysis, and conclusions
• More than just sharing data and results
• Supports sources, information, evidence, and conclusions
• Document-centered data collection
• Standardized source citation (see Evidence Explained)
• Source citation as data not text
• Source provenance
• Information extraction
• Evidence evaluation and weight
• Conclusion recording
• Online data backup
• Community of researchers
• Online data storage or peer-to-peer offline storage
• Data linking and layering, not merging
• Expanded to include not only web-based applications but also desktop and mobile
• Modernizing of GEDCOM or replacement with XML-based format
• The ability to not do anything with genealogy for a year and then start right where I left off without any loss of information or momentum

Now the last point may just be my own personal wish list item, but if  a Genealogy 2.0 application included a place to put everthing and kept track of what I have done and what else needs to be done then it would be much easier to continue where I left off.

Genealogy 2.0 Expanded links:

• Source-Centricity
• Evidence Explained: Citing History Sources from Artifacts to Cyberspace by Elizabeth Shown Mills
• The BCG Genealogical Standards Manual

I look forward to your comments and ideas about Genealogy 2.0.

The book can be purchased from Genealogical Publishing Company.

The site is simple to understand and I was able to quickly register and add a few books by just typing in the ISBN.  Of the 8 books I entered, “Evidence! Citation & Analysis for the Family Historian” had been added to LibraryThing by other users the most times.  It was added 339 times and has 5 reviews.

One question that I had before going to the site was whether it would allow me to “check out” books to my friends and keep track of it.  LibraryThing has the ability to connect to book swapping sites, but that is not what I was looking for.  Let’s say I have a book that a friend wants to borrow so I go ahead and loan it to them.  Weeks later I am looking on my bookshelf for that very book and cannot find it.  So I start looking in all my book stashing spots and cannot find it.  Maybe at that time I remember that I let someone borrow it and then I need to remember who that someone was.  Now if it was a single book, I could probably remember it as long as too much time hasn’t passed.

My idea is that in LibraryThing, I would be able to check out books to others and it would show up in my list as being checked out and by whom.  That way I could consult LibraryThing to jog my memory.  I could also set a checkout period so that my friend doesn’t borrow the book indefinately and take it with them when they move.  After the checkout period expires, LibraryThing would send an e-mail to both myself and the person who has the book reminding both of us to make the physical transfer of the book back to its owner, me.

Some might ask if this should be a feature of LibraryThing or not.  The site is called LibraryThing after all.  Doesn’t a library keep a catalog of books and allow people to check them out?  I can understand that LibraryThing didn’t want to include book swapping as that is not the function of a library, but checking out books is.

I look forward to my continued use of LibraryThing and one day blogging about its new ability to check out books.