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Hi,
I have a lineage that contains about 150 persons traced back into Denmark. I also have hundreds of documents pertaining to these persons that support the lineage (birth, baptisms, confirmations, marriages, deaths, censuses, etc.).
Now, the archives (Danish National Archives) has completely changed the way their data is located and the opslag (web page numbers) are all different; the links (apart from the base page address) are all different; as is the navigation to the source pages.
This renders several components of all my source citations incorrect for 150 people!
1. Obviously, this is the danger of citing web based information; but, at what point is a researcher done with their work? I mean all my citations were good until about a year ago (as near as I can figure). Now they all need editing!!! That is a LOT of time consuming work; and then what if the archives change their layout again... and again...
2. It would seem that copying exact web page addresses is not the way to go; also, trying to point to a document by general navigation on such pages is a waste of time, since it can all change. It looks like a more generic citation is called for when using web citations, even if sacrificing details? Otherwise, if anyone checks the sources, say ten years from now, most of the information would be stale, useless, and misguiding. Comments? Opinions? Guidelines?
pbaum,
pbaum,
You have encountered a circumstance that is going to become more common as small archives are merged and website addresses change with technological developments or convenience of the site designers.
You are a careful researcher, and have doubtless included in your citations as much information about the original sources (such as title, about-location, type of record, page number) as you could find or figure out.
These details will enable a future researcher to locate a given record using whatever index, finding aid or search engine is available at the time. If you have included a URL and accession date in your citations, this will alert future seekers to the possibility that the internet location of a given record has changed. It is not your fault, and no one expects us to keep up with such internet changes for, say, the next 5 years.
Even so-called "permalink" addresses can change website locations as enterprises change what "cloud" entities they lease. With luck, site maintainers will enact redirects where needed, but who expects that they will do this forever?
Your experience implicitly warns researchers that they must search out and add record details to the defective auto-generated citations utilized by such sites as FamilySearch.org. There is just no substitute for a thorough record description in a citation.
Good hunting,
This is a perfect
This is a perfect illustration of why a web citation always needs a "retrieved on" date!
It's also why I always make sure I keep a copy of the page, if at all possible (some sites are configured to prevent printing -- a pox on them!). Usually I'll just keep a PDF copy, rather than do any more damage to the forests.
Dave