How to cite a birth certificate that isn't really a birth certificate?

By Anonymous on Fri, 04/24/2015 - 10:11

Forums

I guess my initial question is what kind of document would this be considered?

How would you cite this document? The title is as follows...
The United States of America 
Department of Commerce 
Bureau of the Census
Washington 
Notification of Birth Registration

This certifies that the following Record of Birth is registered and preserved in the office of the State Registrar of Vital Statistics at Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

It was issued by the the Oklahoma City Board of Health.

This is the only "birth certificate" he has ever had. It is a certificate type looking document, but it's not really a birth certificate. It's not a hospital certificate. It is certified.
 

I can't post the document because he is still living.

Any ideas? Thanks!
 

Submitted byEEon Sat, 04/25/2015 - 10:25

Amakerney,

No. You do not have an official birth certificate. What you have is a family artifact. This "Notification of Birth Registration" form was created by the Census Bureau in 1924 to assist states that were just beginning vital registration. The individual states who collected the data sent this form to families to notify them that the birth had been registered; but there is no repository that maintained copies of these notifications and no repository to cite. If you contacted the state vital-records office, you would receive a different form, with a different title, and—quite likely—differences in the amount or nature of details.

Family artifacts are cited as privately-held records. The basic format is at EE 3.25. Do make sure, in citing it, that you copy the exact title "Notification of Birth Registration" in quotation marks, rather than referring to it generically as a birth certificate.

The Census Bureau addresses this confusion at http://www.census.gov/about/policies/foia/age_search_and_birth_records.html

The two links below provide the perspectives of other researchers who are using these documents:

http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/APG/2008-07/1216976767

http://lfmccauley.blogspot.com/2011/04/did-u-s-federal-government-register.html