Find A Grave Image Issues

By Anonymous on Tue, 01/10/2017 - 21:56

Forums

I have previously been citing any Find A Grave listings like this:

Find A Grave, Find A Grave, database with images (http://www.findagrave.com/ : accessed 11 Nov 2016), memorial #23397157, Rhoda Cole Stephens (1770-1821); citing Masonic Cemetery, Bunceton, Cooper County, Missouri, USA; gravestone photograph # 121450148 by Diana (#47342864).

But I realized that in a layered citation, the most important piece of information should be the "first layer," so to speak.   And I ONLY  use information off of gravesite photos.   I may use things in the Bio as a research clue, but never ever as a source.  

So, with the image as the most important thing, shouldn't it come first? Because I don't care where the image was hosted, just what the image is.  (i.e. if the person that took photo and shared it on Ancestry and FindAGrave and GoogleDocs and a personal website, then it is less important which 'repository' I use, than what the document is).  Right?

Or have I gone completely off the rails?

Submitted byEEon Wed, 01/11/2017 - 09:46

Interesting, Cynwrigte. You've invoked a "citation rule" I've not heard before: Cite the "most important piece of information" first.  Let's take a simple source and see how that would work. Let's say that you found a photograph of G. Whillakers in a book off the library shelf. Would you cite it this way?

Photograph of G. Whillakers, p. 234; in Sam Smithereens, Historic Logging Camps of the Great Northwest (Chicago: Bunyan Press, 2000).

I suspect not. The standard format is this:

Sam Smithereens, Historic Logging Camps of the Great Northwest (Chicago: Bunyan Press, 2000), 234, for photograph of G. Whillakers.

Citing something at a website follows the same basic rules as citing something in a print publication. The photograph you are citing is on a page of a website titled Find A Grave. Therefore,  you follow the same basic pattern you would follow in citing something  you found in a book.

If  you were citing, say, a print book or a microfilm publication that has been reproduced at somebody else's website, then you would have two separate publications to cite, in which case you'd have a choice as to which you'd prefer to feature. But that's not the case here.

Incidentally, when the website's creator is the same as the website title and is also part of the URL, you don't have to repeat that three times. You can simply start the citation with the website title.

Submitted byCynwrigteon Wed, 01/11/2017 - 13:22

Ok.  I've looked back at the section about layered citations and it really doesn't boil down to most important thing first.   I was working under the imperssion that layered citations were layered in such a way that if each outer layer was stripped off, when we were down to a single citation, it would still contain all the info to find the origanal source; like we cite the manuscript first, and the online location where we saw the copy second.  I'm not sure where I got that.

 

On 438, when talking about digital images, it says, " When you cite a digital image of a record, you are citing the record-- albieit in a surrogate form" and the original data would be the first layer and the place you found it online would be the second.  So why doesn't this hold for citing a headstone? 

Masonic Cemetery (Bunceton, Cooper County, Missouri, USA), Rhoda Cole Stephens marker; photgraph supplied by gsbcmo 12/14/2007; citing FindAgrave memorial #23397157. (or something like that) like 5.13 Rural Graves

Except, I guess I personally haven't confirmed that the image of the headstone was taken at the location indicated on the FindAGrave page, is that why?

 

 

Cymwrigte, you are right: You didn't visit the cemetery. 

Part of the answer to your question at the end of paragraph 2 also lies in this paragraph from my original posting:

If  you were citing, say, a print book or a microfilm publication that has been reproduced at somebody else's website, then you would have two separate publications to cite, in which case you'd have a choice as to which you'd prefer to feature. But that's not the case here.

Also, using the structure that you suggest immediately above (i.e., to lead with the identity of the cemetery), your citation tells us that Masonic Cemetery is "citing ...."  But that cemetery isn't citing Find A Grave. It's Find A Grave that is citing the cemetery.

Other reasons apply also. For example: If you are using a relational database to organize your data--as most users of Find A Grave do--then the lead element of your First Reference Note will also be the lead element of your Source List Entry, under the template structure that most software uses. Do you really want to list each individual grave in your Source List?  Perhaps, if you have a number of graves from Masonic Cemetery, you might want to lump them together in the Source List--but then, as you say, you didn't visit the cemetery. You used an unrelated website.

Timely thread, as I am currently writing up how I cite Find A Grave as a source in various situations. For example, I may use only the photo, one of several photos, all photos on the memorial, only the memorial, a combination of the two, a biography on the memorial, a transcribed obituary on the memorial, or other varieties of information. These will be based on "QuickCheck Model -- ONLINE IMAGES: PLAQUES & STONES," p. 216, and EE 5.16, p. 229. This thread, and the one at https://www.evidenceexplained.com/content/find-grave, are thought provoking.