citing e-mail sources

[Robert Jacobs 0]

A lot of the information in in my project has come in the form of e-mails sent to me by family members. So far I have cited them by date, sender & recipient. My e-mail files are becoming unwieldy and will have to be reorganized soon. I use Outlook as my e-mail client, which means that the messages can either be archived in Outlook-readable form or exported in a variety of formats -- Excel, Access, CSV and a few others.

 

How have others dealt with this? Would pasting the relevant e-mail text into the TMG citation memo field make sense? Is there a way of searching that data other than by looking at each citation individually?

 

I should probably get this done while there are still only a few dozen back-emails to deal with. Any advice will be much appreciated.

 

Good wishes to all.

 

 

formerprof

[GenerationGoneBy 0]

I have an email tag where I copy the full text into the memo field of the tag. Attach it to the people mentioned, the person who sent it etc. Then I can delete it from outlook

[Jane Neuman 0]

Hmmm, I hadn't thought of that.

 

I think of the email as a source. I create a source and attach the email to the source and then cite it as usual. If the email is short, I just copy it into the notes section of the source. If it is longer, I save it to a text file and attach that to the source as an exhibit. And ... because I'm still attached to my paper ... I usually print it and file it too!

 

 

 

I have an email tag where I copy the full text into the memo field of the tag. Attach it to the people mentioned, the person who sent it etc. Then I can delete it from outlook

[Michael Hannah 0]

You will get a variety of replies, but my method both includes some of the e-mail in the citation, plus stores the full e-mail for future reference.

 

I include the smallest possible understandable extract of the e-mail in the Citation Memo [CM] that is relevant to that one specific citation. Different citations to the same e-mail will likely have different CM extracts. My custom source templates include the CM in both the FF and SF. That way I don't wonder why I cited this e-mail to this tag. Then I make "My Files" as a Repository which I link to all these e-mail sources. Finally, I put in the Repository Reference (on the Source Definition Attachments tab) where I have stored my copy of the e-mail. If electronic it could be a filename and point to the pathname on either the hard-drive or the CD where the file is stored. If you wish to keep your e-mails electronic, I recommend exporting the e-mail as ASCII text files and storing them on CD. A specific program (like Outlook) may come and go, but ASCII has always been readable. My most significant e-mails I print out and the Repository Reference is to the file where that paper copy is stored. My custom Bibliography template for e-mail sources includes the Repository Reference element so I can find the full e-mail if I need to. If I move where I store a particular e-mail, then I only have to change the Repository Reference for the source.

 

Hope this gives you ideas,

[Robert Jacobs 0]

Thank you, Teresa, Jane and Michael. I think Jane's plan fits my project best as I don't need a system quite as elaborate as that Michael suggested. I am adopting Michael's suggestion of an ASCII archive for the e-mails. That makes a lot of sense to me and offers the further advantage that my periodic CD shipment of my TMG files to my eldest son can then include the e-mail archive as well.

 

Thank you all so much.

 

 

formerprof -- Robert