Forums
With much hoopla, Ancestry added images of estate documents (wills, files and sometimes much more) for most US States, on September 1, 2015:
http://blogs.ancestry.com/ancestry/2015/09/02/u-s-probates-are-here/
Then on September 24 and 25 Ancestry began to remove most of what had been uploaded for New Jersey. Much is now gone.
If you knew that the data you want to cite is now gone from your source-site, would you note this regrettable circumstance in your citation for a document? Here is an example:
http://www.geneamusings.com/2015/09/amanuensis-monday-post-287-1702-will-of.html
Good (and quick) hunting to all,
Jade, Dr. Seaver's approach,
Jade, Dr. Seaver's approach, in that blog posting, works fine.
If we want to adhere to the core citation principle that parentheses enclose the place and date of publication, then the fact that the material is no longer available could be added as the last layer of the citation, which is more commonly the place where we add our personal remarks.
Dear Editor,
Dear Editor,
After reading Randy Seaver's blog post, and he has several, with follow up blog posts by others, What I am going to do is to create a ToDo List Item to follow up in 6 months or so, or IF I see an update about the specific Record Collection, to go see if it "re appears".
With any luck, I won't be struck by this problem, however, I do have some New Jersey records that appear to have gone missing, but none of my folks were in that batch. Since I save a Digitial Copy of any images, label and link them to my Citation, I HAVE the image and what I need. I may or may not know that it did go missing.
The problem reinforces to me, the need to save those images on my computer and not rely on the vendor to keep them for me. Also, looking a couple of pages (images) before and after the Image I want, is also I do, just in case there are folks in the F.A.N. club on those pages.
My only question is, Do I make the disappearing image part of my citation? IF I find out that it does go missing, I certainly would include that in the citation but also include a ToDo item for follow up.
Thank you for addressing this issue.
Russ
Russ, when you ask whether to
Russ, when you ask whether to "make the disappearing image part of [your] citation," I'm not sure what you mean. An image itself isn't part of a citation. The citation identifies the source of the image. If, in your narrative or your database, you assert a "fact" that you took from an imaged document, then you would support your assertion with a citation to that imaged document--even if you know that it is no longer at the website where you found it. Following EE, you would have captured full data on the document, its source, and the website at the moment you captured the image. If you later discover that the image is no longer there, unless you find that document elsewhere, you would continue to identify the site where you found it--and add a note that, as of such-and-such day, the document is no longer imaged at that site (or the database is no longer there).