Citation quality records your assessment of evidence for a particular person, family, or fact. It has three separate classifications: Source, Information, and Evidence. These describe different aspects of your analysis; they are not a single score that proves a conclusion.

Open Quality for a use

1.Open the relevant person in Edit Person.

2.Select the person, family, or fact being evaluated and open its Sources list.

3.Select the citation and choose the Quality/star control below the editor header.

4.Choose the appropriate Source, Information, and Evidence classifications. Read the explanation shown for each selection.

If you cannot find Quality on the main Sources page, open Edit Person instead. Select the fact you want to evaluate, open its Sources list, and select the citation. This lets you assess the evidence for that fact, such as a birth date, rather than give one rating to the source for every purpose.'

Source

Original identifies a source in its first recorded form. Derivative identifies material produced from another source, such as a transcription or extract. Authored identifies a narrative that combines material with the author's own analysis or conclusions. Choose Don't know when you have not determined the classification.

Consider what you actually read. A handwritten register and someone's typed copy of it are different sources: the copy may contain mistakes or omit information from the register.

Information

Primary information comes from someone with firsthand knowledge of the matter. Secondary information comes from someone whose knowledge is secondhand. Undetermined means the source does not supply enough information to decide. Don't know leaves your assessment unspecified.

Consider who supplied the particular information and what they could have known. One record can contain information supplied by different people or information about events far apart in time.

Evidence

Direct evidence answers the research question without requiring other evidence to construct an answer. Indirect evidence contributes toward an answer that depends on combining information. Negative evidence is a meaningful absence of information that you have reason to expect. Don't know leaves the classification unspecified.

Direct does not mean infallible, and indirect does not mean useless. A blank field is not automatically negative evidence: first establish why the missing information would be expected in that record.

Consider the fact you are trying to establish

The same certificate might support a child's birth and a parent's birthplace. The informant's knowledge of those two events can differ. Reusing the citation saves entering the reference again; it does not remove the need to evaluate its evidence for each fact.

Write down why you reached your conclusion. Research notes on a citation appear wherever you use that citation. An explanation that concerns only one fact can go in that fact's note. See Editing a citation for where to put notes, and Using Sources and Citations for using a citation more than once.