WJhonson(a)aol.com wrote:
doc.wikipedia(a)ntlworld.com writes:
A church website, if it is obviously aimed at PR
and full of blurb, should have claims of membership and influence taken
with a pinch of salt. However, a page on a small church which narrates
that it was built in 1791, built of sandstone, and has a clock tower of
gothic style dating from 1806 built by village subscription to celebrate
Trafalgar, and that six generations of the family of the Lord of Boggle,
is hardly likely to be lying. And if the same information can be
verified for the website of the county historical society, then common
sense says we have enough.>>
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Historical Society websites are not reliable sources.
For the most part they consist of segments written by amateur historians
and amateur genealogists.
I started the Local History Project, and not even I would consider a site
like that reliable and citable.
IF one of those authors has been previously published by a third-party
publisher (who does fact-checking), then it might be considered a reliable
source. But not until then.
One fact is that local histories are seldom written by people who live
far away from the community in question. Most are indeed written by
amateurs, and they often draw unsophisticated and unwarranted
conclusions. I've seen awful work done by professionals too, so I'm not
about to abandon my judgement when I see academic or professional titles
attached to somebody's name.
Reliability depends just as much on context as anything else.
Ec