Is brevity better than completeness? Duplicate sources.

Question

From 1 February 2018 all digital collections at the Swedish National Archives (SVAR) are free.  In the past I have referenced Swedish church books using ArkivDigital (AD), which are behind a paywall.  I have added church book images from SVAR to a profile since I can also provide a free link to a black and white picture.  The AD image is in color and, for me, clearer to read.  The collections in SVAR and AD are different so there is often no choice but to refer to both collections.  In my profiles I clearly distinguish from which the collection that my citation refers.

So my question is: Should I remove the citations from AD which are duplicated by a citation to SVAR?

Answer 1

I would not remove a second source to the same record.  If one site ever goes down, the other one will hopefully still be available.  It's a similar issue with U.S. census records.  If someone cites Ancestry.com as a census source and I find the same record on FamilySearch, I will sometimes add that citation to the profile so that non-subscribers can also view it without searching.

Comments

As for census records, I don't cite the secondary sources at all, I look at the primary source and assure myself they were transcribed correctly. Than I copy the census record. Ancestry and family searches have both recently changed what they list. And they have also changed the addresses were they are found.

I also add notes to the census records if I believe the census taker wrote things down wrong. in paranthesis with a question mark).

Answer 2

I agonize over this one myself, but I always list the duplicates since I have the citations anyway. We don't know what will happen next when it comes to the world wide web. (Obviously SVAR itself is an institution but we don't know how it will be displayed and offered in the future.)

In the way that Wikitree works, the biographies are not cluttered with all the source text, you just have the number. You only see the full details if you are curious about it and scroll down. It shouldn't be a turn off to have duplicate source locations and links.