I recently saw two different titles that were not clear until I read the introduction to the books. Simply titling something “Research in the National Archives†no longer works. Is it the National Archives of the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, or South Africa? Or maybe it is the National Archives of India, Scotland, Cambodia, Japan, Ireland, Kenya, or Norway. Your sister who moved from Pennsylvania to London, England, five years ago has caught the genealogy bug. She tells you she is going to the National Archives. Wow! Is she coming to Washington, D.C. to work on the family? She may mean the UK.
When you talk about a national archives be clear about which one you are referencing. When you cite the source of a document or database, be clear about which national archives it is from–even in the case of a microfilmed record. Don’t be the one to send your future great-grandniece to Scotland instead of Hungary, France, or Nigeria after she reads through your old papers. Genealogical writers, researchers, lecturers, bloggers, historians, and cataloguers alike need to pay close attention so we don’t cause additional confusion.