Citing sources on a blog

I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity last Monday to present a webinar for the folks of the Georgia Genealogical Society on the topic of using a blog as a genealogical research log, and the questions asked by attendees (where there wasn't enough time to answer them during the presentation) were sent to me by Linda Geiger, so that I could address them here on my own blog.  So here we go:

The question was asked whether or not one would cite sources on a blog.  Absolutely!  You could do this in one of two ways.  You could either do it somewhat formally by following an accepted standard (such as the one documented in Elizabeth Shown Mills' Evidence Explained) and including that at the end of the posting (or parenthetically in the text of the posting adjacent to the fact being cited), or somewhat informally by providing the details for the citation as part of the discussion of the information and its source.  Because the typical blog posting is generally only about a screenful in length, either method would work.  What is important is that the reader can accurately link the citation to the information provided in the posting. You don't want to run the risk of the information getting separated from its source.

For instance, I might talk about my great-great-grandmother Mary Ann Reilly Smith, and refer to some facts about her life in this way: "I recently learned some new information about my great-great-grandmother from an article entitled "One Woman's Work" in the (Newark, NJ) Sunday Call, September 28, 1890, page 9, column 3.  It said...".  Even better would be to include a link to the source or to include the image of the source itself in the posting.

The mystery of former East Orange major James W. Kelly, Jr.

My brother Jeff has begun a new blog about the elementary school he attended in East Orange, New Jersey, during the late 1950s: Stockton School.  I'm enjoying seeing the photos and reading his postings about some of the people whom he went to school with or who taught there. 

One of his more recent postings mentioned an occasion where he met the mayor of East Orange, James W. Kelly, Jr.  What baffles him (and me) is that we can't find anything about Kelly after he left office in 1970.  I plan to keep searching, but unless Kelly is still alive somewhere (living off the grid in a retirement community?), I find it hard to believe that I can't find any record of his death.  Unfortunately, "James Kelly" is such a common name that I can't say for certain that one of the ones in the Social Security Death Index isn't him.

If someone out there happens to know something about what happened to Mayor Kelly after 1970, I'm sure that Jeff and I would love to hear about it.