Citing digitized images downloaded from TNA

Sarah, we're assuming here that you're using EE 11.60 as your model for materials from the TNA website—specifically, that you are following ref notes 1 and 2 (p. 632) for "Emphasis on the original record."

Most of your citation works okay. However, your first part does have a problem.

Barque Wave Queen, official no. 71342, registry of Londonderry, N.S. [Nova Scotia]; 114, BT 162/32 Registry of Shipping and Seamen: Annual Lists of Ships Registered: Plantation[s] 1875; digital images, The National Archives of the UK (TNA), Discovery http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C1733893 : 2017.

Someone reading the red part of this citation, as constructed, would assume they must look for a document called "Barque Wave Queen," that carries a doc. no. 71342.  They would find no such document in BT 162. 

By examining the document that you attached (thank you), we see that

• The first 6 words are actually words from the last line of data on the list provided by the first page of the document.
• The next 2 words represent your description of the purpose of the document
• The last 4 words tell us part of the identity of the creator of the document

But we’re still missing the identity of the document itself. You do ask whether you “need to include the extremely long title of the form.”  Yes, indeed. That’s its identity.

With an extremely long title (check EE’s index for Titles > shortening) you may be able to drop part of it, from the end of the title—but never from the first of it. You want to include enough of it to identify what this record is.  In this case, when you identify the document by its title, you will also provide another piece of information that’s missing from the citation: the date of the document.  (Always, when citing a document, we need to cite the date.)

The following fixes this set of issues:

Port of Londonderry, N.S. [Nova Scotia], “An Account of the Number of Vessels on the 31^st December 1875 which have been registered at this Port, and still remain in the Registry Brooks at this date …”;

Because this is a simple list, whereon information is easily found and clearly written, it is not necessary that you identify the specific line of data that you are interested in. Typically, the specific information of interest is presented in the text of our narrative or entered into an event field in a relational database. The citation then cites the source in which that information appears. If you still wish to include it in your citation, then you would place those details after the document’s identity—i.e.,  

Port of Londonderry, N.S. [Nova Scotia], “An Account of the Number of Vessels on the 31^st December 1875 which have been registered at this Port, and still remain in the Registry Brooks at this date, …” last line, for “Wave Queen” (registered as no. 71342)

What your citation tells us up to this point is essentially this:  Here’s the creator of the record, here’s the name/date of the record, here’s the specific detail in that record.   

Then, your citation proceeds to identify what this document is a part of (series, record group, archives, etc.) 

You begin this part of the ciatio with “114, BT 162/32,” shown in green above.  Let's disassemble this code so others reading this message will know what's going on here.

The database entry for this document identifies the document as BT 162/32. That represents the unique number the archives has assigned to this document. It means this:

            Record Group: BT = Board of Trade

            Series:              162 = Registry of Shipping and Seamen: Annual Lists of Ships Registered

            Piece No.        32                               

However, “114” is not a part of the document ID in the website entry. Someone reading your citation (or you at a later date) have no explanation for the 114. Your placement of it before BT 162/32 tells your reader that first they must look for something numbered “114” and then look for BT 162/32.  They won’t find the document that way.

When we actually eyeball the document and scan its details, we see that “114” is stamped in the lower right corner of that particular page or folio. From eyeballing, we can deduce that the document is folio 114 of a bound register. What we're eyeballing does not tell us the register's own ID.

When we use the image viewer to scan backward to the start of that register, we see no filmed cover, spine, or title page. All we know—from what we’re eyeballing on the images—is that it’s a register TNA identifies as piece (item) 32 in series 162 of the record group BT.

However, below the image, TNA gives us the following structure-guide to how it organizes this set of records.

From this, we see that BT 162/32 is described as “BT 162. Plantation”  Thus, 162/32 would be register (piece) 32 in the “Plantation” group of registers.

Look again now at EE11.60. You will see in the Bomford will citation that the TNA document number is IR 26/423/245. The pattern is this: a letter code followed by three numbers that are separated by slashes. This represents

Record Group  SeriesNo./PieceNo./FolioNo.

Your BT 162/32 only covers the first two numbers. The third number position is where you put that folio number 114. This gives us  

Port of Londonderry, N.S. [Nova Scotia], “An Account of the Number of Vessels on the 31^st December 1875, BT 162/32/114.

Then we add the identification of the series and record group in which this BT 162/32/114 is found.  We find that data on that same “Context” guide that I’ve inserted above.

If we want our “working notes” to be as complete as possible—to help us understand the records we’re dealing with—our citation could include all the hierarchical layers on the context guide, starting with the bottom one and working up to the top: piece, series, subgroup, record group. At the least, for a self-explanatory citation, we would want to record the identity of the piece, series, and record group:

Port of Londonderry, N.S. [Nova Scotia], “An Account of the Number of Vessels on the 31^st December 1875," BT 162/32/114, Registry of Shipping and Seamen: Annual Lists of Ships Registered, Records of the Board of Trade and of Successor and Related Bodies, The National Archives (TNA), Kew, England;

Then we’re ready to cite the database through which we obtained the image:

imaged, TNA, Discovery ( http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C1733893 : accessed 20 March 2017).

At this point, one piece of information is still missing. Without it, users of your citation will have to do some exploration to find the actual image. When we click your URL, it takes us to the image we need, but a viewer in which we are offered 375 images. If we assumed that “folio 114” translates to image 114, we err.  The image number is actual 140 (and 141 for the backside of the folio). So that users of the citation don’t have to scroll and scroll and or do test-stabs at random image numbers, and wait for each intervening image to download, in order to eventually find the right one, we should include that image number in our citation. 

We place the image number in the part of the citation in which we are identifying the database and website, because that image number is relevant only to the database. It’s not part of the information one would use to locate the original record within the archives. As when citing any published source, after we have cited the basics for the website …

Author, Title (publication place=URL : date),

… then we cite the specific location within that publication. In this case, it’s the image number(s).

Altogether, we have:

Port of Londonderry, N.S. [Nova Scotia], “An Account of the Number of Vessels on the 31^st December 1875, BT 162/32/114, Registry of Shipping and Seamen: Annual Lists of Ships Registered, Records of the Board of Trade and of Successor and Related Bodies, The National Archives (TNA), Kew, England; imaged, TNA, Discovery ( http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C1733893 : accessed 20 March 2017), images 140–141.

Your second message asks whether your source list entry should begin with “England or Great Britain.”  That’s your choice. EE 2.48–2.52 discusses the pros and cons of the various ways to organize a source list.