Free Fold3 Access Through April 15
Access to Fold3’s Civil War records, that include Compiled Service Records for all Confederate units and some Federals, is available free through April 15 with registration. Details here.
Fold3 has a ton of records (several tons, really) from other conflicts, as well. If you haven’t used it before, it’s worth looking into.
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Dead Confederates, A Civil War Era Blog 
I have a fairly complexing question–when using a site like ancestry.com or Fold3, what would you expect a writer to use as a source? Should it be the documents themselves, or the site, or a combination? What is the most professional? The most academic? Is this a moving target just now? Thanks.
You mean, how to cite it?
This is how I cited material in the CW Monitor from soldiers’ Compiled Service Records at Fold3:
J.P. Blessington, Compiled Service Records of Confederate Soldiers Who Served in Organizations from the State of Texas, Sixteenth Infantry (Seventh Infantry; Flournoy’s Infantry), National Archives and Records Administration, NARA M323; J.T. Winfrey [sic], ibid., Second Infantry (First Infantry, Moore’s Regiment; Galveston Regiment; Van Dorn Regiment), NARA M323.
In short, I cited the NARA file, and ignored Fold3 — that’s just the mechanism I happened to use to get to it. I did the same thing with contemporary newspaper accounts, citing the publication (name, city, date, page number) directly, without reference to GenealogyBank, NewspaperArchive or other route to get there.
Also, when I was doing the blockade running book, I realized that I had so many cites in the Official Records of the Navies that it made no sense to give full-length citations over and over and over, especially since most anyone looking at my citations knows that source well already. So I pared them down to this:
ORN I:13, 793
I checked with some nautical-minded friends, and they said they could use that truncated citation as easily as any other, so that’s what I used.
This is another case where I used the electronic (CD-ROM) version, but it includes the pagination info, so I was able to cite it as I would the bound volumes.
Andy,
Although I generally agree with you, do you follow the same rule if the database source was JSTOR, ProQuest, or Project Muse? The Chicago Manual of Style requires citation not only to the journal but to the database where one got it. I assume that most publications that use the CMOS would require one to follow suit. I mean, it would be nearly impossible to prove that one got an article from Civil War History online when it’s readily available at most major university libraries, but if one cites an article from the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, which isn’t readily available unless you are near Fort Wayne, it would be obvious to most observers that it came from an online database. Couldn’t a case be made (however slight) that for someone to be able to check on your references, knowing that the newspaper article came from GenealyBank or NewpaperArchive would at least allow them to go to the site, pay the membership fee or do a trial sign-up, and have access to the same article that you cite? Or am I making too much of all this? 🙂
Best
Rob
Thanks for taking time to comment. No, I don’t think you’re making too much of this. So long as it doesn’t end in fisticuffs, it’s all good.