How to cite naturalization records in FamilySearch catalog?

Hello, Matches:

Two basic rules of citation may help you preserve what’s left of your hair. It does not matter whether we are citing naturalization records, church records, or military bounty-land files. These basic rules are the same.  It does not matter whether we are citing FamilySearch, the National Archives website, Google Books, or arkivverket; these basic rules are the same:

Rule 1

When we cite online images of record books, we have two separate things to cite:  (a) the original record book; (b) the website that provides the images. We put the details for each in its own layer. Details that describe one of these should never appear in the layer for the other. 

“QuickLesson 19: Layered Citations Work Like Layered Clothing” should help you with this. Using the analogy that the QuickLesson presents, the basic logic is this:  If you are wearing a red jacket on top of a yellow-striped tee, and someone asks you to describe what you are wearing, you would not say that your jacket was yellow-red and your tee was striped.  Each item we wear and each item we cite has its own identifying information.

Rule 2

EE 2.22: “When a manuscript or record book has no title, you should create your own generic description. … You do not use quotation marks, because you are not quoting anything.”

 

YOUR PROBLEM 1: SEPARATING THE LAYERS

Your first citation offers this (to which I have added color for visual separation):

Oliver County, North Dakota, "Naturalization Records, 1890-1943", "Petitions, v. 7 (or 1), Feb. 1907–Jan 1909; no. 1–50": 46, Nickedemus Berger petition of naturalization (29 Dec. 1908), and order of admittance (29 June 1909); digital images, FamilySearch (familysearch.org : accessed 25 Oct 2023), Image Group Number (DGS) 7785246, images 353–355[;] citing the State Historical Society of North Dakota, Bismarck.

This citation says that Oliver County, North Dakota, created a book titled “Naturalization Records, 1890-1943.”  Then we see another title in a separate set of quotation marks “Petitions, v[olume] 7 (or 1), Feb. 1907-1909; No. 1–50.”  The relationship between these two titles is not explained.  Then we’re told to look on p. 46 of the book that, we presume, carries one or both of these titles.

In reality, Oliver County did not create a record book with either of those titles; and neither set of words that appear in quotation marks are an actual title. Both sets of wording are copied from cataloging data that FamilySearch created to describe the individual contents of multiple items on a single roll of film.  

BOTTOM LINE: As per rule 1 above, the words created by FamilySearch (which you are citing in Layer 2) should not be a part of the identification you assign to the original records (which you are citing in Layer 1).

 

YOUR PROBLEM 2: ANALYZING THE SOURCE TO CREATE GENERIC DESCRIPTIONS

The material you are citing is complicated. Several different types of material appear on this one roll of film. You wisely moved backward, image-by-image, from your image-of-interest (353) to the target board that identifies the content (image 246 which states only “Volume 7”). Immediately following that target board, we see the start of an index to that volume; and there we see that the cover to the volume has not been filmed.  We have no idea what the title is, from the images of that book alone. From the target board, we might assume it was "Volume 7." But we would err.

By studying the whole roll we get a much better idea of what we are dealing with.

Image 6 of the film provides a basic understanding of naturalization records. It identifies the content of the roll as naturalization records accumulated by the courthouse across 100 years and eventually transferred to the State Archives.

Image 7 presents a list, likely created by the State Archives for its own cataloging purposes, identifying 11 volumes created by Oliver County that are being filmed on that roll.  We would like to think that the list cites exactly what is on the cover of each volume—and that is likely—but we cannot assume it without risk of misidentifying what we are using.

This is the list:

Comparing this list to the film, we see a problem: From the target itself and the FS cataloging data, you’ve identified your source as “Volume 7.”  However, there is no volume 7 on this list. You’ve identified your documents-of-interest as a petition and an “order of admittance.”  However, this State Archives list includes Petition and Record” vols. 1 through 4, but not a “volume 7.”

Continuing with our examination of the film itself, we see:

Images 8-9 provide the photographer’s set up.

Image 10 is the photographer’s target board stating “Volume 1.” 

Image 11 is the first page of a book that carries no title. No cover is filmed by which we can identify the actual title of the volume. However, the first page offers an 1892 declaration of intent, whose content and date match the first item on the State Archives list “Declaration of Intention, ‘A-2’, October 13 1892–June 25, 1906." This set of words is typical of those stamped on courthouse volumes, in which vol. A-2 of the Declaration of Intention series runs from October 13 192 through June 25, 1906.

From this, we can safely conclude that the labels assigned on the filmer’s target boards at various points on this roll of film—i.e., “Volume 1,” “Volume 2,” ... "Volume 7," etc.—do not identify the actual volumes. The targets simply identify the order in which the filmer pulled a volume and began filming it. 

BOTTOM LINE:

• When your Layer 1 identifies the original volume as “Naturalization Records, 1890–1943,” users of your citation will not find any volume by that title.
• When your Layer 1 identifies the volume as “Petitions, v. 7 (or 1),” users of your citation will not find any volume by that title.

So … how do we identify the original record book?

EE 2.24–2.31 cover the Family History Library (now FamilySearch Library) and special guidance for using its material. See especially 2.27: ”FHL Film of Unpublished Records” which states:

To create our citation, we should copy precisely the label from each filmed book or file. If a register or file is not labeled, we should look for the target that the GSU imagers placed at the start of the material. If the target is missing or seems to be inaccurate, consult the catalog entry and create a generic label [*] Be aware, however, that the FHL catalog description frequently uses a generic label to describe the contents of an entire roll. The actual title of a specific register or file may not appear in the catalog.”

* EE2.22, presented under "Rule 2" above, has defined a generic label and cautioned us not to put those descriptive words in quotation marks as though they were an actual title.

Following this guidance would give us this:

Oliver County, North Dakota, Naturalization records 1892–1943, unidentified volume beginning 27 February 1907, page 46, no. 46: Nickedemus Berger petition of naturalization (29 Dec. 1908) and order of admittance (29 June 1909); imaged, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-CSMB-S9WQ-M : accessed 29 October 2023) > image group number (IGN) 7785246 > images 353–55; citing (at image 7), Oliver County Naturalization Records, “Petition and Record, 1, September 23, 1907–June 29, 1909,” North Dakota State Archives, Bismarck.

You will note two things:

• The words we use to create the generic description is not in quotation marks and does not have every-word capitalization as though it were an actual title.
• The words that appear to be the actual title of the book, taken from image 7 (the fact that it is the actual title being a fact we cannot verify without going to the archive and looking at the original to see what is stamped on that volume) are relegated to the "Citing ..." Layer in which we report what we're told about the source but cannot see for ourselves.

 

YOUR PROBLEM 3: CITING WEBSITE MATERIAL THAT'S NOT IN A NAMED COLLECTION

In your second proposed citation, you follow your software’s template for online records that appear in a named collection.  To fill in all the blanks provided by the template, you created a title for the collection, pulling words from the website's cataloging data for the film, and put those words within the quotation marks that would be used for the actual title of a collection:

Oliver County, North Dakota, "Naturalization Records, 1890-1943", browsable images, FamilySearch (http://www.familysearch.org : accessed 27 Oct 2023), "Petitions, v. 7 (or 1), Feb 1907-Jan 1909; no. 1-50": 46, Nickedemus Berger petition of naturalization (29 Dec. 1908), and order of admittance (29 June 1909); Image Group Number (DGS) 7785246, images 353–355[;] citing the State Historical Society of North Dakota, Bismarck.

However, the material you are citing is not in a named collection at FamilySearch. That website has no collection titled “Naturalization Records, 1890–1943.” When we go to the landing page for searching those named collections …

 

...  and we type “Naturalization Records, 1890–1943” in the “Find a Collection” query box, we get no result. If we use the "Search by Place" form to query for North Dakota, we get no such collection.

When we query for North Dakota (not “Oliver County”), we do find a collection of North Dakota naturalizations under the title “North Dakota, Naturalization Records, 1868–1924.” 

 

 

However, if we use the name-query box, and query for Nickedemus Berger, we get no result.  As we can see from the description FS provides for the named collection, this named colelction covers naturalization records filmed at the NARA regional archives, Kansas City (i.e., federal-level naturalization proceedings). It does not cover those filmed at the North Dakota State Archives (i.e., state and local records).

BOTTOM LINE: Because you are not citing a set of papers in a named collection, the model you chose from your software is not appropriate and results in misleading information.

All points considered, I have to ask a question: Do you have a copy of EE itself (which explains a wealth of issues we need to understand in order to create usable citations to historic materials), or are you relying upon suggestions from your software which has replicated EE examples without the essential instruction?

 

 

Hello, Matches. The > sign has become a standard for paths and waypoints, even if we feel they look fugly. Software engineers and their technological methods do tend to be the tail that wags the dog. Here at EE, we battle them when they do something that violates research standards, but will follow their technological dictates otherwise.

Your use of an exact URL for the image is a doable alternative—and one that solves the other situation you note: software templates that do not allow you to place anything after the parenthetical publication data for the website.

You also ask why the "citing" layer refers to image 7, i.e.:

...; citing (at image 7), Oliver County Naturalization Records, “Petition and Record, 1, September 23, 1907–June 29, 1909,” North Dakota State Archives, Bismarck.

Image 7, on the roll of film we're citing, is the place where we find the apparent identity of the register. If we pull information from some other image on that film, we need to state where that information came from. The principle is the same as using a published book in which, say, Nickedemus Berger's naturalization information is abstracted on p. 123, while the author's preface tells us additional information that is important.  We cite both p. 123 and p. xii (or whatever) of the preface.

Interesting word, "misused."  If a website is larger than a collection, and the collection is larger than a folder, and a folder is larger than the images within it, then it could be argued that URL > collection > folder > image is a logical use, no?

As for how a screen reader would parse those greater-than signs: My background and skill-set lie in history, rather than tech; but the fact that this path > waypoint usage was instigated by IT engineers while developing website structure leads me to assume they have dealt with that issue.

Re your statement, "I wonder if it could be rewritten [with] collection first, similar to a database citation (but with no quotes)": that could be misleading to those who use your citation because there is no "collection" at all in this case. At this point with that particular website, as it transitions from millions of rolls of microfilm to billions of pages in named "collections," many users are confused over the differences between "browsable images" (which must be cited to the IGN) and named collections (which are also browsable but are accessed differently).  When we create citations, it helps if we adhere as closely as possible to the architecture of the website.

The frustrating reality we face is that software continually changes, websites continually change, and the methods by which records are delivered to us continually change. Unlike the old days when we cited print publications that stayed fixed exactly as they rolled off the printing press, and manuscripts in dusty archives that stayed exactly the same, we're in a era in which every aspect of everything we do is in a state of flux. Prospects are slim that we'll have everything in sync within my lifetime or yours. 

Meanwhile, we survive by adapting—which is why Evidence Style tries to offer flexibility and format choices. As often as delivery modes change, it keeps both EE and software developers scrambling to adapt, but please know that all of us are trying to ease the pains caused by remote access to the world's archived records.