[Sca-cooks] Citations and Sources was Some very modern-sounding warnings about some very old food

[Johnna Holloway]

Speaking as a librarian who is often called upon to decipher and locate materials based on
odd or wrong citations, let me make a plea for re-citing citations in posts.

When the conversation started yesterday with the words
"In her overview of early Medieval food, Kathy  Pierson writes:….," I am sure  several readers responded by saying
"Kathy who?" 

With the archive at hand, we can of course do keyword searching and locate the fact that 
you mentioned Kathy Pearson back on June 8th, 2013, but that was several months ago. Pearson is not a household
name on this list. The only time she had been mentioned was in that June post.

 We have several sources that we abbreviate (medieval cookery.com, godecookery, Florilegium,
FoC, Menagier, Concordance, EEBO, OED, etc) and people that we cite by last name (Hieatt, Scully, Brears, Ivan Day), but
not Pearson and not Pearson's 1997 JSTOR article.

One reason why it's important to cite the sources and re-cite them as necessary these days is that this list is
now a source of conversation and referenced over on Facebook and other lists. It's been pointed out that
most of the food conversations now take place on Facebook and not  this list in fact. 

The list's posts also are selectively added to the Florilegium, so for content sake, it's good to repeat the citation. The archives may disappear
after awhile, leaving readers in a decade with only your post appearing in a file on dietetics and no explanation of who
or what was meant by Kathy Pearson's overview of early medieval food. Having been one of those librarians called upon to
go through and attempt to find sources based on just a name or notion, I am all for full citations

Johnnae

> On 2/10/2014 11:03 PM, JIMCHEVAL at aol.com wrote:
>>  I'm not writing an academic paper. Typically I link to my sources, but not
>> always. Still, if anyone wants to know a specific source for a text I use,
>> they're welcome to ask.
>>  
> 
On Feb 11, 2014, at 3:56 AM, "Laura C. Minnick" <lcm at jeffnet.org> wrote:
> 
> How nice. Jim, when you post in this community, you need to follow the conventions of the community. Not just what suits you. It has long been the practice that when you first bring up a source, or bring one up after a time, especially if you are leading out a post with it, you offer the citation. Without being asked. This is just as important with secondary sources as with primary ones.
> 
> Liutgard
> --