Citing a compiled extract of military registers located in an archive

In 2004, I visited The Military Museums in Calgary, Alberta and was fortunate enough to be permitted to photograph the page from, “Lord Strathcona's Horse (Royal Canadians): Extract of Records,” compiled by Captain. F.C. Powell, the Adjutant for Officer 1/c Records, Lord Strathcona's Horse (RC). This is a one-of-a-kind document and can only be viewed in the museum archives. The photographed page contains key information relating to my grandfather, Thomas Baird Murison, and his pre-WW1 military service.

I really have no experience in citing such a record, nor can I seem to find any one particular category of record into which it fits. Below is my first attempt to draw together some of the information from the EE book to form a citation. Could you provide some feedback, please?

Footnote

F.C. Powell (Capt.), “Lord Strathcona's Horse (Royal Canadians): Extract of Records,” compiled 18 November 1927, indexed by surname, entry for Thomas Baird Murison (regimental number 1597), attested 20 December 1906, struck-off-strength 7 June 1909; manuscript, The Military Museums (TMM), Calgary Alberta, Canada. TMM Ref. TOS/SOS, R.2, 1835–. Spine labelled, “This record covers some enlistments in 1885-1893 in addition to many from later years.” Viewed by appointment, 15 October 2004. 

Short Footnote

F.C. Powell (Capt.), “Lord Strathcona's Horse (Royal Canadians): Extract of Records,” entry for Thomas Baird Murison (reg. no. 1597), attested 20 December 1906, struck-off-strength 7 June 1909.

Bibliography

Powell, F.C. “Lord Strathcona's Horse (Royal Canadians): Extract of Records.” Manuscript. The Military Museums (TMM), Calgary Alberta, Canada. TMM Ref. TOS/SOS, R.2, 1835–. Viewing by appointment.

Submitted byHistory-Hunteron Fri, 07/16/2021 - 08:47

I note that copying and pasting a citation from my word-processor appears to trigger the use of italicized block quotes in the posting. Pleas note that my citation contains no italics.

Submitted byEEon Fri, 07/16/2021 - 10:48

History-Hunter,

I’ll check with my website guru about your “turning my text into a fancy, italicized quote” issue. I’ve noticed it happening with you, but not with any other poster. And it does not do it for me when I copy-paste from Word or NotePad.

Re your example, turn to EE 3.14 “Basic Format: Documents.”  This fits your need exactly. (User tip: Every chapter begins with gray pages on which the first page is QuickCheck Models and the backside is Guidelines and Examples.  On the Guidelines and Examples page, skim down the list of topics; most of those lists, after Basic Issues, will have a listing for Basic Format.)

Also note EE 3.3.  When we cite archived manuscripts, the elements we cite in a reference note are in a specific order. For U.S. style citations, we begin with the smallest element (specific item) and work up to the largest (archive & its location).  In some other nations, the traditional pattern is to start with the largest element and work down to the smallest.  You’ll note that your Full Reference Note is a mixed-bag. It starts with the specific item, jumps to the archive and its location, then jumps back to mid-level elements.

Below, I’m pasting in your draft, with alterations. Following that, I’ll add a couple of other explanations.

Full Reference Note:

F.C. Powell (Capt.), “Lord Strathcona's Horse (Royal Canadians): Extract of Records,” compiled 18 November 1927, indexed alphabetical by surname (name?), entry for Thomas Baird Murison (regimental number 1597), attested 20 December 1906, struck-off-strength 7 June 1909; manuscript, TMM Ref. TOS/SOS, R.2, 1835–; The Military Museums (TMM), Calgary Alberta, Canada. The spine states, “This record covers some enlistments in 1885-1893 in addition to many from later years.” Viewed by appointment, 15 October 2004.

Subsequent Note:

F.C. Powell (Capt.), “Lord Strathcona's Horse (Royal Canadians): Extract of Records,” entry for Thomas Baird Murison (reg. no. 1597), attested 20 December 1906, struck-off-strength 7 June 1909.

Source List Entry:

Powell, F.C. “Lord Strathcona's Horse (Royal Canadians): Extract of Records.” Manuscript TOS/SOS, R.2,1835—. The Military Museums (TMM), Calgary Alberta, Canada. Viewing by appointment.

Full Reference Note: Alterations

  • The word “compiled” is not necessary. In fact, it’s highly unlikely that a manuscript of that extent was compiled on a single day.  Short manuscripts—a letter or a muster roll, etc.—are typically done on one day. But with a compiled work that extends over a period of time, the date represents the completion date.  The basic elements for a manuscript are Author, “Title of Manuscript,” Date, specific place therein.
  • The word “indexed” may or may not be appropriate.  EE has an index: an end-of-manuscript appendix that alphabetizes names and subjects, then cites the page on which each name/subject appears.  If I’m envisioning this compilation correctly, based on others I’ve seen, the whole is typically alphabetized by the name of the soldier with no separate master index at the end—hence my suggestion in red.
  • The word “manuscript” is not necessary. The form of the citation tells us that it’s a manuscript. As a corollary, when we cite a book, we do not specifically say “this is a book.” Rather, the form of the citation tells readers that it’s a book.

Subsequent Note:

  • Shortening of author’s name: When we cite an authored work, the Full Reference Note cites the author in full. The short form uses only the surname (The exception to this would be cases in which our research is citing multiple authors with the same surname writing on the same subject. As an example, my late husband was also a historian and we both published books and articles on same subjects. Hence, a research project that used works by both of us would likely use “E. S. Mills” or “G. B. Mills,” as the shortened name for the Subsequent Note.)
  • Details about service: These would not be repeated. The Subsequent Note would cite only Author, "Title," and specific entry.

Source List Entry:

  • Again, here, we have the issue of “mixed directions” in the order of elements. Your draft starts with the smallest (the author and title), then cites the largest (archive and location), then jumps back to a mid-level element. Thus, I rearranged the order of the elements.
  • EE would likely not include the “viewing by appointment” comment in the Source List Entry. This type of detail helps us with an ongoing research project; but it’s also temporal information that might be suddenly wrong tomorrow.

Incidentally, EE does not use the terms “Bibliography” or “Bibliographic Entry,” because the root of those words, “biblio,” means “book.”  Historical researchers use far more materials than just books. Thus, EE uses the terms “Source List” and “Source List Entry.”  

Dear Editor;

Thank you for the feedback. At least I've managed to capture the essence of what needs to be in the citation. Note too bad, given that there are a number of "rules" at play in this citation. I'll update my citation to follow your suggestions and read over the suggested portions of the EE book.

The original citation was one I did back in 2004, prior to having the benefit of your book. In updating the citation to try to follow the EE book, I obviously didn't re-check the citation to ensure I had used a consistent ordering convention.

Some of the mixed ordering results from being in Canada and being caught between the British and American conventions on ordering. Add to that the differences in punctuation and spelling ... Well, let's say it's difficult to keep everything consistent. In my day, we were taught the "British" way, but most of the books and genealogical software, currently available in Canada, use the American convention. One can't configure the  software to consistently follow the British convention. As a result, one almost needs to adopt the American convention for genealogical work. Old habits die (very) hard and so they present a constant challenge for me in achieving consistency.

The use of "Bibliography" is because that is what RootsMagic calls the field. While I acknowledge that the term is incorrect, I use it in my notes to indicate which field is to be used in entering my free-form citations. (I gave up on templates a long time ago. They just are not flexible enough for me to render true EE citations.)

Submitted byEEon Fri, 07/16/2021 - 11:01

Afterthought,  when you create those indented footnotes in your word-processing software, are you using your software's "blocked quote" style? Or .... ?

Yes. It appears that the only way to paste content to the web-page form is to use Ctl-V. This seems to carry along the block quote style. Unfortunately; the styles appear to be defined differently in my document and the EE web-page. There seems no easy way to "past unformatted" in the web-page form.

History-hunter, Ctl-V is, of course, the conventional way to paste. It's the use of the pre-formatted "quote" style within Word that seems to be the problem. When you need to indent to "set off" a citation for discussion, you are not actually creating a quote.

What you are wanting to create is indented text. But if you use a style that is labeled "quote," then Drupal's conversion editor interprets that literally and presents that block as a featured quote, with quotation marks and italics.

In most of my own Word templates, I've created an "Indent" style that is exactly the same as my "Normal" text, except that there is a .5" margin on the left and right.   Or, for each paragraph I want to indent (if the indent format is not already in the document I've opened and I'm in a hurry), I'll just "select" the paragraph and then, at the top of my work space, move the ruler's slider over .5".  If you do that, a Ctl-V should paste in your citation exactly as you create it, with no conversion to Italics and fancy quote marks.

Thank you for the suggestion. I've tried this in new documents, but as I'm working through a backlog of old citations, this is not practical for me. I have found an alternative, though. I cut and paste the selection into an ASCII text editor, which removes all hidden formatting, then cut and paste from that to the webpage. This avoids the more potentially disruptive approach of introducing new styles in an existing document.

Just to clarify, H-H, I didn't mean for you to reformat all your old notes. I though you were composing your questions to EE in Word, then pasting the Word text into this site's query boxes. If you're copy-pasting citations originally created in a relational database or some other software, there's no telling what sorts of interfaces are intervening!

In any case, it's good to have a workaround.