Citation Issues

"Address for private use" phrase

While I completely agree with excluding postal and e-mail addresses from published citations for privacy purposes, I have a hard time understanding the need to include a specific phrase, for example,

    [ADDRESS FOR PRIVATE USE].

And I don't understand why we would want that phrase to be in small caps which tend to distract the reader. Maybe it is a holdover from my software design days where we often used all caps and square brackets to indicate a variable where the user should substitute real information for a placeholder name.

Descriptors in a citation and a question about Church Census'

I have a copies of pages from a Catholic parish book the title of the book is "St. John's Parish Census Book (Old) with an index," the entries are in Latin and arranged in family groups similar to family books in Germany.

When I called the parish office to see if the books were still in their office, some confusion occurred over the "title" apparently the office refers to these books as family books. So far my citation looks like this:

Citing a Database with an Image of an Index

Some of Ancestry's databases include an image of an index. The index image gives information that is not included in the database search. For example in the "Ohio Deaths, 1908-1932, 1938-1944, and 1958-2007", a search for Andrew Thurner will give the results: Name: Andrew Thurner, Death Date: 25 Dec 1924, County of Death: Hamilton. Viewing the image there is more information available to find the actual death certificate ie. the State file numbers, volume 4611 & certificate no. 66537.

State compiled database at state site

I have just discovered that the South Dakota has an online database for 100 year and older birth records. The citation I have come up with is;

South Dakota Department of Health, Online Services (http://doh.sd.gov/OnlineServices.aspx : accessed 11 April 2012), Search 100 year-old birth records, entry for Harvey Holzer, 27 December 1895, state file no. 782293

Not enough info, but want to cite it anyway

I really should post this circumstance on the Ancestry errors wiki--and will--but I also need to figure out how to cite it.

In Ancestry's "U. S. City Directories (Beta)" I have accessed what they call "Stockton City and San Joaquin County Directory, 1888." In it I found my subject individual working as "hostler" for a particular man whom (with a little additional research) I discovered was somewhat well known in horse-racing circles. This is an interesting bit of information and I want to use it.

Census Citation Formats: Arrangement of place elements

For several years now I have been cleaning up my database and formatting citations. This last week an interesting observation occurred with a post on a mailing list discussion about 1940 census citations. I noticed that the examples where "...County, State, population schedule, City/Township or District..."