CMSR digital image received from NARA

By Anonymous on Sat, 01/23/2016 - 11:30

Forums

I ordered a CMSR online, and received a link to a digital image to download.

I have the first part of the citation: following the model in EE11.32 page 594. My question is, how to cite the layer -- the digital image.

First Reference Note would go (so far) (I think)

Compiled service record, William Watson, Pvt., Co. D, 52 Mssachusetts Militia Inf.; Carded Records, Volunteer Organizations, Civil War; Record Group 94: Records of the Adjutant General's Office, 1780s–1917;

then what would come after that?

Thank you.

Submitted byAnnieon Sat, 01/23/2016 - 11:33

Also the last part of the citation would presumably be

National Archives, Washington, D.C.

Would I also include the NARA microfilm publication number and roll number?

Here is the email I received. Note this will only be available online until about Feb. 20.

Your digitized reproduction order from the National Archives and Records Administration is now available. You may view, print and/or download the file here https://ws.onehub.com/files/bfqxaobg. This link will be available for 30 days, after that it will be deleted. 

Submitted byEEon Thu, 01/28/2016 - 13:04

Annie, thanks for the link. You started this query by drafting a citation that follows EE's pattern (11.32) for compiled service records of the Civil War era:

Compiled service record, William Watson, Pvt., Co. D, 52 Mssachusetts Militia Inf.; Carded Records, Volunteer Organizations, Civil War; Record Group 94: Records of the Adjutant General's Office, 1780s–1917;

Then, because this was supplied to you in digital form by the Archives, you asked: what would come after that?

Thanks for asking this question, because you've raised an issue EE does not cover. Actually, there are two significant issues.

  1. The link provided to you by the National Archives is a temporary link that will vanish in 30 days and is unlikely to be captured by a bot for any of the archives for dead web pages. Thus, there's limited reason to include it in your citation.
  2. The archives also supplied this record without any source citation at all. {All of us may scream and pull our hair, here.}

As your original question implies, something more does need to be added to the citation to address these issues. EE would handle it in a fashion such as this:

Compiled service record, William Watson, Pvt., Co. D, 52 Massachusetts Militia Inf.; Carded Records, Volunteer Organizations, Civil War; Record Group 94: Records of the Adjutant General's Office, 1780s–1917; National Archives, Washington, DC. Digital images were supplied by  the archives in a temporary online link, without any citation of source; the citation here is reconstructed from (a) name and unit data shown on the images; and (b) collection, series, and RG data supplied by archival cataloging information for the Civil-War era compiled service records.

 

Submitted byAnnieon Thu, 01/28/2016 - 14:04

Thank you very much! AND thanks for reminding me that they should have provided a citation! I will actually ask them, if I can. I think they expect people to do what I did -- go online and find the entry in the index on their web site. Not great.