Soap Box May 2004

Soap Box
May 2004

Genealogy, Plagiarism and Courtesy

Genealogy is, for most of us, the most rewarding and, at the same time, the most frustrating of passtimes (or should that be pasttimes!?). Also it is not a passtime that can be undertaken successfully in complete isolation. Many of us thrive on the friendly contacts and collaborations created in our undertakings, whether they be those wonderful people who willingly indulge our many requests for free lookups, or the librarian who goes that extra distance, or those whose paid assistance often exceeds our expectations.
At the same time we expend much energy and often a little cash, sometimes a lot of cash, to track down our ancestors, their movements and, if we are lucky, their words. However little we spend on individual items it is my guess that we would all be quite surprised at the total expenditure added up over the years.
Many of us are usually more than happy to share our often hard-won and expensive information in the hope that such an endeavour is a two-way street or at least if someone helps you then you should be willing to help someone else.
The expectation in sharing information is that it is just that - a "sharing" but both ways!! We are surely not the only descendants of our ancestors and that breakthrough may be in the hands of another all along. Thus collaboration is the best way forward.
However there are those whose only contribution to collaboration seems to be submissions to message boards along the lines "Yes we are related. Please contact me directly at ....". The information received from people who use message boards in this fashion is usually minimal or none. Don't be surprised, however, if the information you sent them then appears in another guise!!! There are some that do share having submitted something like the above. My advice is to give a little and if the response is worthwhile give some more. This should save you the disappointment of giving out your information in the hope of getting something in return. Four years after replying to such a submission I have received exactly nothing!

Another type of researcher merely gleans from the internet whatever information they can to produce the "definitive" document on your family. Although they do not necessarily explicitly claim that the work is their own neither do they credit the person whose work they have used. An example of what I mean.
There is a document doing the rounds (How generous of them to share!!!) which contains the following:-
(The interested reader is invited to compare this with the text on my first page - recently changed slightly to reflect a change of view. Aside from this wholesale plagiarism it is abundantly clear that this document has drawn heavily on my research - and not a word of acknowledgement!!! (At least not in the version of the document I have seen.) How many others have their work reproduced in this document? Thus I read the document with a great deal of scepticism. I have italicised the slight changes they made to my words)

"It is clear from the records that this surname has been spelled, (and misspelled) in many different ways. As time has passed some branches of the family adopted different spellings, the most common varients, [they changed the spelling] being Kaup, Koup and Coup, but varients [and again] may also include Koub, and Cupp. One extreme spelling was located in the 1800 census - Koulp.
It is clear that Christian himself, (our immigrant ancestor) wrote his name as "Christian Kaupp", but this spelling is seldom seen thereafter, (1738). The spellings Kaub and Kaup were seemingly preferred by succeeding generations.
As a cautionary note: The cursive style in vogue in Germany in the early 1700's [they incorrectly added an apostrophe - the 1700s is plural - not possessive 1700's!!!] was such that anyone not familiar with it could easily misinterpret an uppercase "K" as an uppercase "R" and therefore transcribe, Kaub, Kaup, Kaupp as Raub, Raup, Raupp. In addition, the individual style Christian used for lowercase "p", lends itself to being misread as a lowercase "f", hence occurences of "Kauff" and "Rauff" in records may refer to "Kaupp"."
[Nancy and Bob Messinger, July 2003 (It would be hypocritical of me to complain about plagiarism and not give my source - but can I plagiarise something that is plagiarised from me???) ]
This document also has introduced a few errors of its own - or made unjustified assumptions. Also it has not addressed the one obvious flaw in the pooled research to date.

You may well be thinking "what is that guy's problem?". Aside from the bad form of not accrediting sources, every time information is copied and distributed it is one further step from its source. And there is an increased chance that something gets transcribed incorrectly. OR the original source may contain an error. I take a professional and scientific approach to my research and prefer wherever possible to verify the information and make my own interpretation on what is written - eg "Kaub" or "Raub" (also see next month's Soap Box). That said however I have accepted the generally held view that Johann Valentine Kaub is the son of Christian and Barbara Kaub. The records of Jerusalem Reformed Church, Western Salisbury, Lehigh Co, Pennsylvania show that on 17 August 1769 Valentin Kaub and Susanna sponsered Georg Peter Weber. Georg Peter Weber is the grandchild of Christian and Barbara Kaub. The assumption here is that Valentine is related to Georg Peter Weber's mother Catherne Elisabeth Kaub, probably her brother. Equally, however, he could be her cousin. To date we have no information to clarify this point. If there is an error then I prefer to get to the source of it. For example, a search for Christian Kaub and Barbara threw up a surname for Barbara. Imagine my excitement! I had been looking for this for years. Imagine my disappointment when I discovered the source to be a relative who had made an error in transcribing the information I had sent him!!

By acknowledging the source of your information you are not only showing courtesy (not to mention an implied "Thankyou!") to the person whose hard work you are using free of charge but you are also giving those who follow the chance to identify the source of any errors. After all the repetition of an error does not make it correct!

Finally, just because it is on the World Wide Web (including these pages!!) doesn't make it correct. Remember courtesy is inexpensive, after all you are probably downloading hundreds of dollars worth of research, free. Always acknowledge your sources. And if you find an error you can let the originator know. If they are serious about their research they will appreciate being told of any errors.

daryl, may 2004