Passport file deposition letter

Jamie, rather than just give you a format for one-time use, EE will discuss the issues you need to consider so that you (and other Forum users) will be equipped to handle all similar problems.

Even though you have the Ancestry QuickSheet, you are wise to be reading EE's chapter 11, "National Government Records," in order to understand the records you’re using at Ancestry. A sound understanding of NARA records helps us to (1) pick out the essential details from the plethora that Ancestry gives; and (2) organize those details into a logical fashion.

Four different citation schemes are battling each other in all those ‘about the source’ details that Ancestry has provided for you.

1. NARA’s traditional organization for manuscript materials
2. NARA’s microfilm-publication program.
3. NARA’s new ARC system, wherein documents are locatable through a single database number (the ARC Identifier)
4. The needs of relational database users for a basic citation format into which all databases at Ancestry.com (or any other similar provider) will fit

Issues 1, 2, and 3 can be dealt with in one fashion. Issue 4 has to be dealt with in another fashion. If Issue 4 is the dominant issue for you, then EE’s basic citation format on that Ancestry QuickSheet has been designed in a way that it will still accommodate 1, 2, and 3. But researchers still have to understand 1, 2, and 3 to be sure they include all essential data in that “basic” format.

NARA’s creation of the ARC system, wherein documents are identified by a single database number, is designed to simplify location of records; but it has complicated citations.  The result is that researchers need the identifiers provided in the traditional archival framework (described at EE 11.1 for the six bullets)— in order to understand the records they are using; but they now need to cite the ARC Identifier to make it easy for NARA to relocate the record.

Assuming you’ve studied the introductory pages of Chapter 11 (particularly 11.1–11.11), and that you have tried to use the ARC identifier number at the NARA website, then you would choose one of two approaches.

Option 1: The Ancestry QuickSheet’s “Basic Format” for images of manuscript collections, which follows this sequence:

•  “Database Title,”
• {descriptor} digital images,
• Website Name
•  (URL : access date),
• {item of interest: document ID, creator, date, etc.};
• {identification of Ancestry’s source—for which you’ll have to pick out the essentials from all the unarranged data Ancestry provides, and regroup them in logical sequence}.

Option 2: One of the ARC models at EE 11.10-11 , which presents two formats:

1. Citation to actual images. If NARA provides these for your document, then your simplest approach is to use the NARA image and cite the NARA image.
2. Citation to database. For most of the material in the database, you are not given an image, ony a database description. If this is all you have to work with, then you use this format to cite that database entry. In your case, NARA’s ARC database describes the record collection but refers you to Ancestry for the actual images. That means, you are back to citing Ancestry, following the bullets above.

The “complicated” part, now, will be that last bullet: identification of Ancestry's source. Amid all those details Ancestry gives for the source of  its source, you will need to cherry pick and re-sort them, in order to separate the identity of the microfilm from the ARC database identifier.