Citing online high school yearbook

By Anonymous on Sun, 11/16/2014 - 14:40

Forums

I've been searching Evidence Explained, Second Edition, for a proper way to cite an online high school yearbook, but I'm not finding a direct reference in the index for yearbooks (online or printed).  I'm under the impression that perhaps yearbooks would be handled under another section in EE, but I'm unsure of what section to base my citation on.  Can you provide guidance?

Submitted byEEon Sun, 11/16/2014 - 15:33

dpslager,

Let me answer with a question: Why would citing a yearbook be different from citing any other type of book? Why would citing, say, a highschool yearbook be different from citing, say, an 1948 yearbook of the Missouri Historical Society? 

A basic book citation calls for citing,

Author-Creator, Title:Subtitle (place of publication: publisher, date), page.

To get this data, we study a book's front matter. Sometimes a book's front matter gives us all the needed data. Sometimes a book's front matter is missing one or more pieces of that information—in which case, the basic rules for missing information apply (see EE 12.14 and 12.15).

If we view online images of a book, then we have a second layer to cite: the digital provider. We follow the same basic pattern because a website is the online equivalent of a book. At Google Books, where we access a book simply by Googling for its name, the website citation is simply a matter of citing Website Title (place/URL : date).  At a provider such as Ancestry, where books are delivered through a specifically titled database, we would also need to cite the name of the database (as with a chapter in a book), then add Website Title (place/URL : date).  

Logical?

Submitted bydpslageron Sun, 11/16/2014 - 18:28

Yes, that makes complete sense to cite it as a published book.  OK, so I've tried my hand at crafting a citation based on the front matter of the yearbook as well as the online provider's website where it was located.

Mercy High School, The Mercian (n.p., 1929), p. 52; "U.S. School Yearbooks, 1880-2012," Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 16 November 2014).

In the place of the Author-Creator I put the name of the high school, and for the Title:Subtitle I put the name of the yearbook. I could not locate any publishing information anywhere in the front-matter, and the copyright year was 1929, so the next part of the citation was (n.p., 1929).  My grandmother's senior photo was located on p. 52.  I found this all in the Ancestry.com database noted.  I've uploaded an image of the only front matter of the book that was of any use to this citation.  Would this citation meet EE standards and I've written it?

Submitted byEEon Mon, 11/17/2014 - 11:18

dpslager, you've done a great job of thinking through the issues. I see only two left:

  1. Place. As you note, the volume has no publication place. Given the time frame, it might have been published in the same town as Mercy High School or the school might have used a company from elsewhere. The standard practice is to use N.p. or n.p. as you've done, to indicate "No place of publication given."  However, that still would leave one wondering where Mercy High School is.  Using the name of the school as an institutional author is appropriate--as we do with churches, etc.  In that case, we can use the same practice EE follows for these cases: Name the institution but add it's city state in parentheses.  In other words, the author would be, say "Mercy High School (Chicago, Illinois)."
  2. Date. The image you show carries the date "1930," although the copyright date you found is 1929. If you use the date of copyright (which might have been secured before actual publication), and you are attaching it to a discussion of someone who was a "senior" in that yearbook, would your reader (or you, ten years from now after your memory has gone cold), assume that the person was in the "Class of 1929" rather than the "Class of 1930"?

Submitted bywaynesonon Tue, 12/20/2022 - 17:00

Being on the way up the citation learning curve, I crafted the following footnote: 

Wellsboro High School (Pennsylvania), The 1932 Nessmuk: Vol. 3, (n.p., 1932), 26; "U.S., School Yearbooks, 1900-2016," database with images, Ancestry.com (https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/1265/images/43134_b199570-00029?pId=371611395 : accessed 20 December 2012), 30, page image containing “Seniors” photo of Wayne Knowlton and sister, Rita Knowlton.

1. Are there any EE standards violations?

2. Since I've focused on the specific site page, would shortening the url to (ancestry.com) be the only modification required to change focus to the database?

Wayneson, EE would not say you've committed any "violations." You've addressed the essential issues. But we might finesse it a bit. In Evidence Style, the citation would be

Wellsboro High School (Wellsboro, Pennsylvania), The 1932 Nessmuk, vol. 3, (N.p.: n.p., 1932), 26, “Seniors” photos of Wayne Knowlton and sister, Rita Knowlton.; "U.S., School Yearbooks, 1900-2016," database with images, Ancestry.com (https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/1265/images/43134_b199570-00029?pId=371611395 : accessed 20 December 2012), image 30, page image

Explanations:

  • Between a volume title and volume number, the standard punctuation is a comma. (EE 12.69)
  • when citing volume number, the word "vol." is lower-cased, just as we do for "page" and similar terms. (EE 12.69)
  • No comma goes before an open parentheses. One cancels out the other. (https://www.evidenceexplained.com/quicktips/punctuation-sins-revisited)
  • The standard for parenthetical publication data calls for three pieces of data, Place: Publisher, date, with N.p. or n.p. being used as an abbreviation. (EE 12.69 covers this also)
  • The descriptor database with images would not be italicized. (I suspect this was an accident.)
  • The Ancestry website dropped the .com from its title some years ago.
  • In the URL, the question mark and everything after it can usually be dropped. (But test this in a different browser each time to make sure the shortened citation works.)
  • Evidence Style would use the word "image" before the image number. Otherwise the number is unexplained. Then, having said "image 30," there is no need to say "page image."
  • The explanation that p. 26 offers photos of Wayne and Rita should be placed in the layer that identifies the book.

In answer to your last question, EE would not shorten this citation to just https://www.ancestry.com. At the least, Evidence Style would include the portion of the URL that goes to the landing page for the collection. Adding the 26 characters to take users to the exact image is a courtesy most users would appreciate--and it helps us, as well, when we need to relocate to the page.

 

Thanks, this shores up my confidence. Yes, the italicizing (database with images0 was accidental. My choice of a specific URL was made as I thought about my source entry decision. I think a link to the homepage would be appropriate form for that. I'm not sure I will point to the source again. Thanks again!

I have revisited my citation of this source after spending considerable time consulting EE, including "Citing Ancestry Databases & Images" QuickSheet:

"U.S., School Yearbooks, 1900-2016," database with images, Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com : accessed 20 December 2022), image 30, containing “Seniors” photo of Wayne Knowlton; imaged in “Wellsboro High School (Pennsyvania), The Nessmuk,” vol. 3 (N.p.: n.p., 1932), 26.

I'm still not confident that my last element is properly a "source of source" or "credit line". Do I still need to tweak?

Wayne, a "credit line" or "source of source" identification is not involved at all. You have a book that is clearly identified. You have a website that images the book. There is no other source-of-the-source information that the website could give that would be relevant to the citation. There is no other source-of-the-source information that you could add to the citation to make it more fully identifiable or to facilitate an analysis of the source you are citing and the reliability of its information.

However, this last re-do does create a problem. There is no source in any library or publication catalog anywhere whose title consists of the words you have put into quotation marks: "Wellsboro High School (Pennsylvania) The Nessmuk."  As we've previously discussed:

  • The use of quotation marks means we are actually quoting words exactly.
  • TItles of books are put into italics to indicate that they are books.
  • The use of quotation marks around a title indicates that it is the exact title of a chapter in a book by a different name, or the exact title of an article in a journal of a different name, or the exact title of a database in a website of a different name, etc.

Submitted byrhayneson Mon, 05/08/2023 - 17:10

Piggybacking on these yearbook citation questions. I recently found my mother's photo in an Ancestry online yearbook.

I have a question about the school name.

First, I noticed there are 2 spellings for this school when it is listed. One is "B B Comer Memorial High School" (contains the 1968 yearbook) and the other is "B. B. Comer Memorial High School" (contains the 1969 yearbook). My mom is actually in both of these years.

So I thought I was ok with the citation, but then I noticed within the first few pages of the yearbooks it has "B. B. Comer Memorial School." Actually, I did a yearbook FAN search (haha) [up and back a few years] and found still another variation within the books - "B. B. Comer High School."

So my question is, in the citation should I use the school name as it appears in the online yearbook or how the school name is spelled out in the yearbook collection on Ancestry? Maybe I should send Ancestry a message asking them to correct and combine the two yearbook groupings for this school.

Thanks for answer to school name question.

Ricky