Intranet vs. Internet citations.

By Anonymous on Sat, 06/06/2015 - 20:35

Forums

Hello,

Citing a record from the internet is relatively straight forward. Ok it can have its quirks! My challenge is citing a digital image of a record that is only available on an intranet. I did a word search on my trusty electronic version of EE and intranet produced no results. 

The Minnesota Historical Society has an online website. On the internet you can view a "Birth Certificates Index." This index covers the years 1900-1934. However, when you are physically at the Minnesota Historical Society this same index also contains a link to the actual document.

Combining a state level citation with an internet citation this is what I have come up with.

Minnesota Department of Health, birth certificate, no. 1902-24356, Frances Eleanor Richardson, 1902; digital image of certificate, "Minnesota Birth Certificate Index," Minnesota Historical Society (Intranet, available on-site: accessed 7 August 2008); Saint Paul.

I am not sure where to put "Saint Paul," the location of MHS (Minnesota Historical Society). Nor am I sure this citation adequately tells you what I viewed. I added "of certificate" after digital image because I wanted it to be clear that I was not just looking at the index. 

Thank you,

Ann Gilchrest  

Submitted byEEon Mon, 06/08/2015 - 16:23

Interesting question, Ann.

You're  right that "Saint Paul" seems out of place when put after the parentheses that normally carries publication data—a position that widely separates it from the repository name that it usually follows.

Considering that (a) material on the Internet is considered published, but (b) material in an in-house intranet isn't broadcast/published, we could resolve the "where-to-put-Saint Paul" problem by treating the collection ("Minnesota Birth Certificate Index") the same way we would treat any unpublished collection at an archive. The standard formula would be

Document creator, ID of document, Date of document; Collection ID, Series ID; Repository ID, Repository location.

Following this pattern, the first part of your citation would remain the same, the index would  be the collection, the intranet would be the series in which the collection is found, and the repository and location would then fall into its proper place. The result would be

Minnesota Department of Health, birth certificate, no. 1902-24356, Frances Eleanor Richardson, 1902; digital image of certificate, "Minnesota Birth Certificate Index" (intranet database available on-site: accessed 7 August 2008); Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul.

This solution would make one alteration in the normal pattern for citing a document at a repository. Normally, the series ID is not placed in parens. It's just another <comma> ... <semicolon> item in the string. But, given that it is an electronic database and given the need to cite an access date for the version of the database that you used, it would be logical to use parentheses there, as you did.