A computer consultant with more than 20 years in
genealogy who has used TMG for over five years.

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Mills vs. Lackey Categories. One of the bigger topics of conversation among genealogists is how to cite the source of the data. Many have been following the citation categories outlined by Richard Lackey in his "Cite Your Sources (Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 1980). However, many new types of sources and media (e.g., CD-ROM and e-mail) have been developed since he first published. Now Elizabeth Shown Mills, Evidence! Citation & Analysis for the Family Historian (Baltimore: Genealogical Publish, 1997) shows us how to cite these newer sources. So it is up to the user to determine which to use. Both are good, and some will decide to stay with Lackey while some will use Mills, and still others may prefer something different.

TMG will require that you choose a citation category. Once you have chosen the category, you can then use the templates designed by Wholly Genes according to their interpretation of the rules. TMG will allow you to modify any template globally or you may change a source pattern for each Source that you create, or some combination of both.

Each Source Type defaults to a particular template with certain variables for the different parts of a source citation depending on whether the citation is used as a full footnore or endnote, a shortened version, or a bibliographic entry. Remember that these templates were composed by Wholly Genes and you may disagree with the template or it may not suit your needs.  However, you may change the template globally or the pattern for a source. For example, a simple book will have the author’s name, the title, the publisher, the place of publication, and the date of publication. Normally a book citation will not list a repository.  But, there may be times that you may wish to show one.  For example, this might be a portion of the General tab of the Source Definition Screen:

You can add a repository on the Attachment tab of the screen, but it won’t print in a citation unless you change the pattern in the Output Form tab of the screen as shown below for the full footnote.

Clicking on the Full Footnote Preview button of the above screen will show the following window:

As a word of explanation, the "<, [CD]> " is replaced at the time a report is printed with the actual notes (e.g., page numbers, etc.) that pertain to a citation. Information contained between "[ITAL:]" & "[:ITAL]" is printed in italics on a report.