The Official Release of Simple Citations, the Book, is Here!
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We are delighted to announce that Simple Citations for Genealogical Sources was released for sale by Family Roots Publishing Company on New Year’s Day 2024. This ground-breaking work, also available on Amazon and Biblio, aims to simplify the citation process for genealogists and family historians. It is designed to:
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That's right, no more worries about which template to use, deciding what information should be included in your citations, or whether you're "doing it right." Now, you can cite your sources with ease and spend your time doing the "fun stuff" - researching and discovering new family members!
Simple Citations for Genealogical Sources is now Available from the Following Sellers
- Family Roots Publishing Company
- Amazon Books
- Biblio
- Heritage Books
Check Out the New Simple Citations YouTube Video!
Want to see an overview of Simple Citations for Genealogical Sources? This video discusses the Simple Citations model, provides an overview of how it is based on a SINGLE UNIVERSAL template that will work with ALL sources (no more hunting through hundreds of templates and more than 1,000 "examples" just to cite a single source), and provides demonstrations on how each of the three sub-template (constructed from the universal Master Template) are used!
What Others are Saying About the Book!
January 11, 2024: A new video by GenealogyReviews features Simple Citations!
December 28, 2023: The first online review of the book appeared on GenealogyReviews, by Jackson Eagleson. Mr. Eagleson states,
“ . . . just this morning I heard that the book by Jeff La Marca, Simple Citations, is ready for release. It'll be released in the next few days. Dr. La Marca tries to simplify the overcomplicated approach some people take to sourcing I've read other books and it just becomes absolutely prohibitive so I can assure you it's a really good read.”
Be sure to visit GenealogyReviews and give the video a "thumbs up!"
Want to Discuss Simple Citations?
Simple Citations is now on social media sites!
A Facebook Book Page created for announcements about Simple Citations.
A Facebook Group Page for users to discuss and share their experiences with Simple Citations.
Now on X (Twitter) for discussions on Simple Citations.
Simple Citations
Citing genealogical sources for your family history shouldn't require a degree in rocket science or entail spending every waking moment trying to determine exactly how to document your materials. I created "Simple Citations" for my own use because all of the existing approaches require too much work, are fraught with ambiguities, and are far too confusing. It was also originally created (back in December 2010) to be used with RootsMagic (RM), a program that, in my opinion, had the most well-designed user interface, was relatively (no pun intended) easy to use, and most important of all, permitted sources to be consistently cited with the least amount of effort. During 2021, another software application, Family Historian (FH), not only added templates, allowed data created with the RM Simple Citations templates to be imported, but also added new features that makes data entry even easier. As a result, after using Simple Citations with RM for more than a decade, I created new templates (based on the original ones developed for RM) to take advantage of FH. It needs to be noted that the approach advocated by Simple Citations can still, however, be used in other programs but with the realization that they probably won't have a customizable template system for entering data consistently. Over the years, I've used many of the other programs out there and most are too complicated and confusing to use. This site was created to help others understand how the Simple Citations system works.
In order to make this site as easy to use as possible, it has been divided into several sections:
- Overview: Provides basic information about Simple Citations.
- Templates: Although this page may be a bit technical, it explains how the templates were developed.
- Examples: Simple Citations is very easy to use, I have, however, provided some examples for those who are visual learners.
- Downloads: Links are provided to download the currently existing templates (for Family Historian 7 and RootsMagic).
- FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions)
- Links: Just a few links to other sites that may be of interest.
- About: Provides a bit of background on the development of Simple Citations.