Citation for image of birth transcription issued to me

Hi, Shayna. I could help you better if you'd indiccate which EE template (or the section number) you have used as pattern.

Thanks, ShaynaNM.  I suspected that you had focused on Template 12 (“Birth or Death Certificate”).  The problem here is that you’re trying to cite something you’re not actually using. You don’t have an actual birth certificate. You’re using (in your words) a “genealogical transcription” of a page of a printed book that shows the page number 40. 

You are indeed wise to recognize the difference between citing a "genealogical transcription of a book register" and the record itself.  All sorts of errors creep into transcriptions. That’s why published lists of vital registrations are cited as a publication (if in print) or a database (if online)—using a template for a publication—rather than leaving the impression that you have examined an image copy of the original certificate.

A basic rule of citation is this: We cite what we use.

• If we have a birth certificate in hand—or we’re eyeballing an image of the actual certificate—then we cite the certificate. 
• If our source is a book or a database, then we cite that. A book/database may cite a birth record or a book/database may provide a list of births, but we’re still not looking at a “birth certificate.”

Let’s think through what you actually have, to identify it precisely, so the citation will explain exactly what you’re using without creating questions for those who use your work—or for yourself years down the line after your recollection of this source has gone cold.

In your first post, you said a transcription was “issued to me.”  That raises questions.

• Who issued it? An official agency?
• Are you saying that the agency sent you a copy of a page from its annual publication listing all births within the year?

It would help us here if you uploaded a copy of what you’re trying to cite.

In your second post, you said you’re citing “the genealogical transcription of a book register.” This implies that the page you’re citing is some society's or some person's transcription of the page from the agency’s annual publication listing births for the year. If so, this means there were two different copying processes: first, from the original certificate to the typed list that was published in book form; and second, from the book to the “genealogical transcription.”  That also raises another question to consider:

• Who made the “genealogical transcription”?  A person? An online genealogical site that has the transcription in a database?

In the OP, after your draft citation, you stated, "sometimes the info seems redundant if a reader is already looking at the image." Here again, I'm not certain whether you're referring to an image of the original or image of the annual publication. In either case: a citation may well seem redundant while we’re looking at an original because a citation repeats much of what is on the original. But the purpose of a citation is to identify what the original is, so that kind of redundancy is to be expected from a citation.  

I know that all of this seems nit-picky, but it matters from the standpoint of the reliability of each piece of information you take from that “genealogical transcription” of an agency’s annual publication. Working through these questions with this one instance, even though it’s taking us several back-and-forths will enable you (and all readers of our Q & A) to quickly handle future situations of this type, without second-guessing.

ShaynaN, thanks for providing the images. Seeing exactly what we're dealing with does make a difference.

There are two ways you might approach this, given that the document you have came to you directly from the agency:

1. PERSONAL ARTIFACT:

You’ve already considered this approach and it would work, using Template 7 as illustrated at §5.9 with the funeral home letter transmitting an extraction or transcript of what they have on file.

2. BIRTH CERTIFICATE—SHORT FORM:

This approach would  use Template 12, as discussed for "Short-form Certificates (Local or State)" at §11.38.  A short-form birth certificate, directly from the agency, actually is what you have.  As you note, the document the agency sent you calls itself a transcription, but it’s not a transcription of the original record, which would have much more detail. Instead, it's a form on which the agency has copied details from the published register which, itself, extracted selected details from the original.

As a short-form certificate, it lacks only the fancy design elements that short-form certificates carry in some states, to make themselves look like an original certificate. If we call it a transcription, as the agency does, that would be misleading without explaining what’s being transcribed. 

All things considered, an Evidence Style citation would be this:

     1. City of Albany, New York, Bureau of Vital Statistics, short-form birth certificate marked “genealogical purposes only,” for Marianna Maccariello, 27 October 1900, citing “page number 40, record number 91,” without identification of book.  This document identifies the attendant and the place of birth, along with sex and race, but does not identify parents.

The sentence I just added at the end is something we’ve not discussed in this thread, but it’s significant.  If you wish, you could also add provenance:

     1. City of Albany, New York, Bureau of Vital Statistics, short-form birth certificate marked “genealogical purposes only,” for Marianna Maccariello, 27 October 1900, citing “page number 40, record number 91,” without identification of book; supplied 2 November 2017 to [your name] by Danielle Gillespie, Registrar. This document identifies the attendant and the place of birth, along with sex and race, but does not identify parents.