Hello,
I am struggling mightily with source list names. On one hand everything I read says source names should be generic. Generic, to me, means......book, census, birth certificate, grave marker, etc. When I look at the souce names in FTM facebook groups and EEv4 I'm getting conflicting input. Many examples in EEv4 use the name of the book, name of the database from a webiste, etc. as source names. My problem with using descriptive souce names is that they then appear in my source/citation twice.
Example: Ancestry has a database "Michigan, Death Records, 1867-1952". So I have been using that as the source name. When I then create the citation to this source I have the following: (assuming I created the citation correctly).
"Michigan, U.S., Death Records, 1867-1952," database with images, Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/60872/images/44471_354767-02551: accessed 25 May 2024); certificate of death, state file #301822, local file #557, 13 January 1943, Charles R. Wendland; citing: Death Records. Michigan Department of Community Health, Division for Vital Records and Health Statistics, Lansing, Michigan, RG: Certificate, 1925-1945, description: 688, Wayne (Detroit), 1942-1943
The problem comes in when I look at the reference note in FTM 2019. It looks like the following:
Ancestry, "Michigan, U.S., Death Records, 1867-1952" (Lehi, UT., USA, Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2015), Michigan Department of Community Health, Division for Vital Records and Health Statistics, Lansing, Michigan
https://www.michigan.gov/mdhhs/inside-mdhhs/statisticsreports/vitalstats, "Michigan, U.S., Death Records, 1867-1952," database with images, Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/60872/images/44471_354767-02551: accessed 25 May 2024); certificate of death, state file #301822, local file #557, 13 January 1943, Charles R. Wendland; citing: Death Records. Michigan Department of Community Health, Division for Vital Records and Health Statistics, Lansing, Michigan, record group: Certificate, 1925-1945, description: 688, Wayne (Detroit), 1942-1943.
There's simply to much duplication for my tastes. I'm also interested in publishing a book or two at some point. The above reference note obviously won't work in it's current form.
To reiterate I need help understaning how to create source names that do not duplicate themselves when I create the citation text. Or I need to understand that this duplication I'm seeing is acceptable. Especially regarding leaving a legacy for others to trace if necessary and for publication. Any help very much appreciated.
Thank you.
Hello, scott r mills, I…
Hello, scott r mills,
I feel your pain. The basic problem you are facing is a software app that has always struggled to follow standard citation principles—in every iteration of the software going back to its beginnings as Banner Blue back in the 1970s. It's improved greatly over the decades, but many users still say they simply ignore the “citation writer” feature and create free-form citations.
In this forum, I cannot tell you how to make your software conform. Users of software citation-generators have wrestled with that for decades and there are copious discussions about it in user-group forums for each software.
Your annoyance at the redundancy and repetition is justified. Neither is expected in any type of writing, even citations. You can help the situation by carefully editing the pieces of information that you feed into each field. Your EE4 example here would be 11.39 State-Level Certificates: Online Images. This example also uses an Ancestry database.
Results would be this:
FIRST REFERENCE NOTE:
1. “Michigan, U.S., Death Records, 1867–1952,” database with images, Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/60872/images/44471_354767-02551 : accessed 13 September 2024) > Certificates, 1921–1945 > 688: Wayne (Detroit), 1942-1943 > 1943, State File Number 301822, Charles Wendland; citing “Michigan Department of Community Health, Division for Vital Records and Health Statistics, Lansing, Michigan."
SOURCE LIST ENTRY:
“Michigan, U.S., Death Records, 1867–1952.” Database with images. Ancestry. https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/60872 : 2024.
The core issue here is that your draft citation cites the exact URL for the image. However, a Master Source Entry (or Source List Entry) would not cite the exact image, just as it would not cite individual page numbers within books or individual documents within an archived collection. Using the specific URL will, indeed, cause you to have many different Master Source Entries for the same database. That problem could be solved by citing the URL for the database itself—as demonstrated at EE4 11.39. You would then cite the path that takes users to the image. This would also produce a shorter First Reference Note also:
1. “Michigan, U.S., Death Records, 1867–1952,” database with images, Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/60872/ : accessed 13 September 2024) > Certificates, 1921–1945 > 688: Wayne (Detroit), 1942-1943 > 1943, State File Number 301822, Charles Wendland; citing “Michigan Department of Community Health, Division for Vital Records and Health Statistics, Lansing, Michigan."