Citing online image of a birth registration.

Ron, it’s no wonder you are struggling. What should be a simple citation to a courthouse register, filmed online, has been made complicated by the manner in which the provider delivers it.

Let’s start with basics:

When we cite an original register that is imaged online, we have two things to cite:

• The original register
• The website that delivers the images

The most basic point to remember is this: Details that identify the original should not be mixed into the layer that identifies the website.

We may organize the citation in one of two ways:

1. We may choose to feature the original register—starting our citation with its details. If so, we have a two-layered citation with all the details for the register going in the first layer and all the details for the website and its database going in the second layer.
2. We may choose to feature the website and its database, placing that in the first layer. We cite this as we would a published book, or a specific chapter in a book (the database is the equivalent of the chapter, while the website is the equivalent of the book). With this approach all the info that identifies the one image we're looking at gets stuffed into the last field of the citation—the field that, for a book, would be used to cite the page number or for other item such as a map number. If we use this approach, then we may need to add a second layer (the “citing ….”  layer) to report any other essential information the website may tell us about the source of the image. Or we may need to add a second layer with information the provider doesn't tell us.

So how do we decide which approach to use? It depends on endless variables, but primarily these three:

• If the images are well done, we can glean from the images themselves all the information we need for a full citation to the original register itself. In that case, it is logical to cite the register in the first layer. Then in layer 2, we cite the website that delivers the images, putting into that specific-item field only the image number itself.
• If the imaging does not provide all needed information for a full citation to the original, then it is best to focus on the website and its database, as you have done. Then we may need to add a layer to say what extra information the website tells us (or doesn't tell us).
• If we use a lot of images from one database/website and we’re maintaining a research database of our own using software that has citation templates, it may simplify our data entry to create just one master citation for the website’s database (and then stuff all the variables into that one “specific item” field) rather than creating a citation for each original register that the database covers.

With most courthouse registers imaged by FamilySearch, we can go to the start of the roll and get full identification. More often than not, when we are working with browsable images, the film will display the cover and spine of the register so that we can identify it exactly as we would if we were in the courthouse itself. 

That is not the case with the digital film to which you have linked. When I used your link, I discovered a host of problems:

1. Your link is not actually to the imaged page. Your link is to the database extraction page that Family Search made for the James W. Stephens entry. That’s not the page you want to cite. FamilySearch provides an image of the original and that’s what we want to use and cite.
2. That extraction page does carry a link to the imaged page—along with a warning that it may not be the exactly correct page; we may have to search a bunch of pages before and after to find the right one. 
3. The link we are given is also to a  “digital film” number. As with many of the indexed databases offered by FamilySearch, we have a situation in which FamilySearch took a much larger roll of film and broke it into “more manageable bites,” assigning new digital film numbers to each of the smaller parts. That undoubtedly makes their databases more workable, from a technological standpoint; but it creates more problems for users trying to cite what we've used.
4. In this case, when we go to the start of this digital film, we see a filmer’s target that names the “series” in which this register appears, but there are no dates and no volume numbers. Nor do we have a filmed image of the cover and spine to more fully identify the volume. Instead, the first register page is actually p. 170 of the unnamed book, the page on which “Mc” entries begin.   This is obviously continued from some other numbered roll and we’re not told what roll number, by which we could go back and check the prior roll for fuller details about this book.

Bottom line: We can’t cite this as though we are there in the courthouse using the original. The only workable approach is to focus on the database and go with the flow of what the database is delivering. (I am also guessing that you discovered this record while querying for a name within the FS database. In other words, you did not seek out this specific register, among FS’s courthouse holdings for Westmoreland, and then search the filmed register as if you were using the original.)

Working with what we’re given, using the means by which you accessed this image, we’d end up with a citation such as this:

“Pennsylvania Births and Christenings, 1709-1950,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-C9T4-93FK-2 : accessed 18 October 2022), image 310 of 533: Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, “Registration of Births,” p. 225, line 14, James W. Stevens, born 24 May 1901, registered 12 March 1902.

You’ll notice two differences here between this citation and yours:

1. Your citation begins with a basic and logical Author/Creator, “Name of Database,” … approach. The problem is that you identify “Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania” as the Author/Creator of that database. But Westmoreland County had nothing to do with the database. The db is a FamilySearch creation.
2. Your "citing ..." layer contains information that is not cited by FamilySearch itself. It does not appear in the database’s frame for the image or in any flyout attached to the frame of the image. That specific information is data you are personally eyeballing off the original register page. It should be part of your citation, but you should not put in the layer that says “FamilySearch is citing thus-and-such.”

My citation above actually does need more information because it leaves the reader wondering where in the bejibbers the original volume might be.  With some FamilySearch databases, there is a flyout that tells us more information of this type. I don’t see one for this particular set of images. We have to get that data by different means, one that we should describe in a second layer that we structure according to whatever we need to say. I’ve colored it red, below:

“Pennsylvania Births and Christenings, 1709-1950,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-C9T4-93FK-2 : accessed 18 October 2022), image 310 of 533: Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, “Registration of Births,” p. 225, line 14, James W. Stevens, born 24 May 1901, registered 12 March 1902; image 4 presents the filmer’s target, stating that the register was held in 1982 by the Westmoreland County Courthouse at Gree[n]sburg, Pennsylvania.

ESM - I just wanted to say that I really appreciate the explanations in your response. Specifically, the 2 types of organization and the 3 variables which influence which approach to use.

I know in the past, another user and I had discussions about database first vs. second and whether that influences the number of layers. And you definitely mention that here. So a "register first layer; online second layer" flips to become a single layer database first note.  Of course, I've mentioned before that I tend to do database first citations quite a bit when I am going to have many many entries from the same database!

Anyway, thanks!