Citing Ireland Census of 1901/1911

By Anonymous on Tue, 02/26/2013 - 20:23

Forums

I'm attempting to cite a few census records from 1901 and 1911 from Ireland.  I am having difficulting finding the correct format.  The records are digital images from the National Archives of Ireland's website.  I have used EE Quick Check Model of Digital Images of Online Archives.  I'm having difficulty because they are individual household returns and the forms are not paginated.  The only identifier I have is that they are household number 1 in Kishyquirk in the DED of Ballyvarra in Limerick county.  This is what I have come up with:                                                                                                                                                                                                 1901 Census of Ireland, Limerick County, District Electoral Division (DED) Ballyvarra, Kishyquirk, unpaginated, household no. 1, Thomas Collopy, digital image, National Archives of Ireland, "Census of Ireland 1901/1911" (http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie : accessed 25 February 2013); original manuscript not cited.

Submitted byEEon Thu, 02/28/2013 - 11:57

jmcavanaugh:

You’ve done an excellent job of thinking through the issues presented by the way the records are arranged. EE would make two tweaks:

Identification of title:

When we use quotation marks around a title, it signals one of two things:

  • It’s an unpublished manuscript; or
  • It’s an article/chapter/database within a larger, standalone, publication, which also has to be identified—that larger title being put in italics to distinguish it from its smaller part.

Clearly, “Census of Ireland 1901/1911” is not an unpublished manuscript, because the material you used has been published on the web. Therefore, it has to be an item within a larger publication. But your suggested citation does not identify any larger part.

On the page that your link leads to, if we click “Home” at the bottom of the screen, it takes us nowhere. That link IS the home page. It’s not just a part of a larger web publication. The URL itself also suggests this. Note that there are no extensions we can remove to take us back to the larger, more-encompassing site.

So: The title you have in quotation marks should be in italics, to signify that it is a standalone site.

Separation of parts (or layers) of the citation:

You have two separate entities you are citing: Your first part cites the original record. Your second part cites the web publication of the images. You would enhance clarity by putting a semicolon between the two parts to clearly divide them.

Result:

1901 Census of Ireland, Limerick County, District Electoral Division (DED) Ballyvarra, Kishyquirk, unpaginated, household no. 1, Thomas Collopy; digital image, National Archives of Ireland, Census of Ireland 1901/1911 (http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie : accessed 25 February 2013); original manuscript not cited.

 

 

Submitted bydsennon Tue, 05/27/2014 - 06:36

I'm also attempting to source cite the 1901 Census of Ireland, however I have a different piece of information that I would to see if I placed correctly.

After the DED, which is Ormeau, my next place location is a street - Dehli Street. This is different to the above citation, which is a small farm village area. Do I add the address after the DED or add it in after the household number?

 Result:

1901 census of Ireland, Down County, District Electoral Division (DED) Ormeau, Delhi Street, unpaginated, household no. 63, Mary Jane Allen; digital image, National Archives of Ireland (http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie : accessed 19 April 2014); original manuscript not cited.

Thanks.

Again, I would disagree slightly. County Down, not Down County. Skip DED altogether. (See my note above for explanation).

You have a street address, which means the house is in a town, village, or city--but you have not identified the town, village, or city. So, add the city (Belfast). I pulled up the relevant Form N on the NAI site (see above note re forms). Page 1 of Form N has a nice dark blot where the relevant parish is indicated, but p. 2 is readable. It is Knockbreda parish, Belfast PLU.

I haven't done a lot of 20th century Belfast research, so am not sure if it would be necessary to add the ward (Ormeau). I certainly find recording the ward useful in US urban research, but I just don't know about Belfast.

I would be tempted to do the address the way the English census does: "No. 63, Delhi St." Since this is a major city, there's a very good chance that "63" is the actual house address, not just the visitation number (as it would be in the prior example, above), but this format (with the comma between the number and the street name) keeps your options open on that issue. (When in doubt, hedge your bets!)

FYI, if you search "Delhi street Belfast" you'll get a map showing you the location (South Belfast, just off the Ormeau Rd., a major commercial street). You'll also get links for real estate currently for sale on this fairly short street, so you can compare the census description of the property in 1901 to the current photos to see what the property may have looked like in 1901. In the couple I looked at, I didn't see any mention of the date of construction, so can't say for sure that what you'll see is what was there in 1901--you'd have to ask someone on, say, a Belfast mailing list. But that's getting a little far afield from the citation question! Sorry!

See my comments above re URLs.

As for "original manuscript not cited" . . . Hmmm. The NAI does have the original ms., but they prepared the digitizations from the microfilm. So, should it be "source microfilm not cited" or should you search the LDS catalog for their reference numbers and format it as a parallel cite rather than a "citing . . ." format?

Thanks, Claire, for weighing in. Somehow, we missed seeing dsenn's question when he posted it. (Our apologies to dsenn.)

With regard to your own question at the end of the post, re dsenn's use of "original manuscript not cited":  The way we are reading dsenn's citation is that the archives, which prepared the microfilm and the website, provides no reference to the original. His citation simply states that fact.

EE does see wisdom in making note as to whether a digital provider identifies its source. But—to address your own point—when an archives has microfilmed its own record set and then digitizes its own microfilm, should our need for information on source-of-the-source focus upon the intermediary film or upon the record itself?

Regarding the use of, say, the FamilySearch ("LDS") catalog to identify reference numbers to create a "parallel citation":  that FamilySearch catalog data might be useful in our working notes, as an add-on, so long as we make very clear that we did not actually consult the film.  On the other hand, officers of FamilySearch have also asked EE to make clear that its cataloging data should not be the basis of a citation because the cataloging data is likely to be "generic" info quite different from the details that appear on the volume or collection that has been filmed. EE addresses this at 2.27.

Submitted byClaire Keenanon Wed, 06/25/2014 - 21:14

I have to disagree on a couple of points. First, general usage: it is County Limerick, not Limerick County. In Ireland, the word "County" precedes, not follows, the name of the county. Second, the DED is relatively unimportant in accessing Irish genealogical records and can easily be left out of the citation. Much more important are the civil parish (analogous to a US county--or a Louisiana parish) and Poor Law Union / Registration District. In this case, for the townland of Kishyquirk, the civil parish is Abington and the PLU is Limerick.

The census is not really unpaginated. First, there are several forms (similar to US Census schedules). Form A is the Household Returns; Form B1, the House and Building Returns; Form B2, Out-Offices and Farm-Steadings Returns; and Form N, Enumerator's Abstract. Form A (the equivalent of the individual return a US census enumerator would collect and then compile into a Population Schedule) is cross-referenced to Form B1 and B2 (see upper right hand corner of Form A "No. on Form B ____") and Form N. That number--which I would use as a page or family number--links all the other census forms necessary to get the full picture (context) of the family and homeplace--number of rooms and of windows, wall and roofing materials, whether the building is a private dwelling or a national school or church property, who the landholder is (all this is Form B1), whether there are stables, barns, piggeries or a number of other specified out-buildings (Form B2), how many families and persons are in each house and what religion they are (Form N--this data is a summary of the detail on the individual Form A, so is most useful in comparing one family against their neighbors). Form N is the "intro" page on the microfilm version of the census, and its most useful function (to genealogists) is that it identifies all the relevant administrative divisions (county, constabulary district and sub-district, parliamentary division, poor law union, city/urban district/town/village, parliamentary borough, DED, townland/street, barony, parish, and townland number (which is necessary for finding the form on microfilm)). Of these numerous administrative divisions, the ones I would track in a citation are the townland (the smallest) (name and number (in this case, it's 46/6)), the parish, PLU, and county. The barony is only used for genealogy research when searching the physical copies of the Old Age Pensions; I can't think of any records genealogists would access that are organized by any of the other administrative divisions, so they are relatively unimportant to the genealogist and can easily be left out of the citation.

As for the URL, the "census" portion indicates that this is a subdomain of the site www.nationalarchives.ie. From that home page, you would click on "Digital resources" and see an intro paragraph directing you to "our genealogy site" (link takes you to genealogy.nationalarchives.ie, which gives links to all their online records (not just the 1901/1911 censuses)). Although the technological standard would be not to use "www" with a subdomain, I see that the NAI site varies between using and not using the "www." I haven't searched the individual domains to see if the "genealogy site" is literally a separate site, or whether the census page is a separate site--but I would think either the general NAI site or the genealogy "site" (subdomain?) would be a better "larger part" reference for the citation than the dead-end census page. At least at the first two domains, the user would readily see what other online records are available through the NAI. Generally speaking, I would assume the main NAI site is the least likely to have its domain changed in a future update, so that might be the "larger part" to use in the cite.

Submitted byEEon Tue, 05/27/2014 - 20:09

Dsenn,

Your instincts are good. Given the information you've provided, EE would also put the street address before the household ID.  With your geographic places, you're going from large to small. The whole street is a larger entity than the one household in which you are interested.

That said, EE would likely move one element in the citation. Your placement of "unpaginated" after the name of the street implies that this street is the only unpaginated one in the district. If all of DED Ormeau is unpaginated, then it would be better to place that "unpaginated" notation after the identification of the DED.

 

Submitted byKristinaCleveron Thu, 12/20/2018 - 07:00

I have a additional questions regarding citation of the Census of Ireland. On the NAI website, it shows the path to the record as: Census Years / 1901 / Tipperary / Fethard Fethard Town / Main Street. Form N also includes PLU Cashel. Should I include the PLU in the citation? Knowing the PLU is important when trying to find records for this family in the civil registers. Also would it be prudent to include information about the specific form being cited?

1901 Census of Ireland, County Tipperary, Poor Law Union (PLU) Cashel, District Electoral Division (DED) Fethard, Main Street, no. 45, Thomas Healy household; digital image, “Household Return (Form A),” The National Archives of Ireland (http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/ : accessed 13 December 2018). [NAI is in italics in original citation]

Submitted byEEon Thu, 12/20/2018 - 09:57
Christina, it depends. If you are citing the path to the document, as organized by the website, then you would want to include every waypoint in that path. For this census, if we use the search query box at the National Archives website, then the locations we're asked for are County, Townland/street, and DED. That said, for your citation to include more locational data than the website requires--when that additional data is known--does no harm and may help in other ways. In our working notes, we're a lot better off citing as much as known as opposed to seeking the bare minimum.

Submitted byKristinaCleveron Wed, 12/26/2018 - 14:27

Thank you, EE. I prefer to go with "more is better" as these Irish records are tricky to search. The town I am researching is Fethard, County Tipperary, Ireland. If the PLU/Diocese Cashel is not used on other database searches for civil records (birth, marriage, death) on IrishGenealogy website and Catholic baptism records, you would not find various for Fethard. For this 1901 census, an Ancestry database search and source link directed me to the image. Since the Ancestry database does not include images, I wanted to be sure to cite the image separately.