Infinite loop of evaluation

I’m reading the introduction to Printed Sources, the primary book for my summer genealogy class. It’s pretty interesting so far. In discussing sources, it mentions that you should evaluate a book in various ways to determine if the book is a valid source. One way to evaluate the book is to evaluate the book’s sources, and I just imagined an infinite loop (or perhaps just a very deep stack) of evaluating a book by looking at its sources and evaluating books in the source list by evaluating their sources and…

I guess it would be hard to have a loop because if source A cites source B, then it’s unlikely that source B, or a source cited by B, will ever cite A because of timing. (I’m such a computer scientist sometimes.)

Yesterday, I visited the Santa Clara Family History Center as part of an assignment. The Family History Library in Salt Lake City, supported by the Latter-day Saints, has branches throughout the world that allow you to access various genealogy materials. I’ve been meaning to visit one of the local branches since I first moved here, and this finally gave me the push I needed. The people there were quite friendly and welcoming (not that I was expecting otherwise), and it was a nice little visit. One thing I really liked is that they had a scanner available so that people could scan the information they find instead of having to print it out. Yay for saving paper.

Here are two pictures from my visit:

Update on the Blackboard situation: I can post without problem on my machine at work, running Firefox 2.0.0.4 (same version as home). There must be some interaction between the plug-ins I have in Firefox at home, or something with the connection between home and SJSU. I haven’t had a chance yet to investigate more, but I will this weekend because having to post with IE is driving me batty.

Back to reading…