Jump to content
Sign in to follow this  
KathleenL

question about source citations

Recommended Posts

One of my projects is to get better about citing my sources in a clear and consistent manner. I have Elizabeth Mills' Evidence Explained citing History Sources from Artifacts to Cyberspace and I am doing my best to use her examples as I enter new sources/correct old ones.

 

One road block I'm running into involves citations for online records. I'll use passenger ship manifests from the Ellis Island website as an example. The only available Source Type for this is "Ship Passenger List (filmed)" This doesn't really fit what I want to record because the fields include series, roll number, and film. How do others address this? Do you put in the website information in one of the fields asking for information about film?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Kathleen,

 

I ignore the newer Evidence Explained and use Ms. Mills' older Evidence! instead. Following her example in that book for citing records seen on microfilm (I don't see a website as anything but a fancy microfilm viewer), I cite the source using the same Source Type I would use if I saw the original. Then I add information about where I saw it at the end of the full footnote, for example "image seen on ellisisland.org." I do this by adding this information to the Comments field on the Supplemental tag of the Source Definition screen, and making sure that the source element is in the Full Footnote template.

 

You could also do the same thing by adding a custom Source Element to the template so it appears on the General Tab of the Source Definition. You might even use a standard element, like Second Publisher, but if you use that one be sure not to include commas or semicolons in the entry.

 

For more on adding source elements see the "Customizing Sources" section of my website, link below.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Thanks for the response. So would I delete the Source Elements in the output form that apply to a filmed record? I'm thinking of series, roll, film. If I have a lot of records from ellisisland.org, would I be better off making a custom source type for these records?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Kathleen,

 

Actually, all but [sERIES] are conditional, so you can ignore them. I'd just make [sERIES] conditional too, and add and you can use it for sites like Ancestry, where the film info is shown, as well as other sites where it's not.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
Sign in to follow this  

×