Help:Conventions/Source pages

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Contents

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Existing Help pages consulted

The following existing Help and similar pages were consulted in the documentation of these conventions. I believe I got all existing conventions and represented them accurately, except where I felt they could be tweaked, in which case, I should have a NOTE or QUESTION in bold.

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Quick reference

To be created once conventions reviewed.

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Creating Source pages

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When to create a Source page

Source pages are intended for sources of community interest. Users searching for a Source page want to be able to find it easily without having to deal with a lot of "noise" from Source pages of limited interest. Please follow these guidelines for when to create a Source page and when to use an alternate approach.

Create a Source page for:

  • A published book (even if self-published)
  • A periodical (journal, newspaper, or newsletter)
  • A collection of records (vital, church, pension, wills, census, etc.) that is reasonably complete for a given place and time period (and religion, if relevant) (i.e. not just a few selected transcriptions)
  • The website of a family association
    • QUESTION: Or should this always be a Repository page??? - we have a mix right now
  • A website publishing reputable genealogy from a significant research project of interest to many people, such as MayflowerHistory.com or The Henry Project.
  • A significant published or web-based guide to finding genealogical resources, such as:

Don't create a Source page for:

  • A source of limited scope that is unlikely to be referenced on more than a handful of pages, such as:
    • A single birth, marriage, or death certificate
    • An obituary or other article about one person or family
    • A family bible, even if it covers more than 2 generations
    • A pension application or file
    • A will
    • An article in a periodical
      • Exception: When an article is a reasonably complete transcript of a non-trivial set of vital or church records (comparable to a book of published records or an online database of searchable records) and especially when the records are not available in a later publication or collection, it can have its own Source page to help users find where records are published.
  • Any source that is ephemeral, unreliable, or difficult for another person to access, such as:
    • A personal genealogy website
    • A family tree uploaded to a hosting site such as Ancestry.com
    • A GEDCOM or similar file
    • A message on a message board
    • A letter or email
    • A collection of records you personally hold
  • Online transcriptions for a single cemetery

For the above situations, you can do any of the following:

  • create a MySource page for the benefits it provides (reuse and/or a place for commentary on the source)
  • create citations with source type Citation only and put all the relevant information in the source citation
  • use an appropriate Source page (e.g., the record collection for a birth certificate, the newspaper for an obituary, the periodical for an article) and put details in the source citation

Don't create a Source page for:

  • A library, archive, or website with multiple collections. Instead, create a Repository page.
  • Your transcript of a source or part of a source. Instead, create a Transcript page.
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Single vs multiple Source pages

Create just one Source page for:

  • A multi-volume book.
  • A periodical publication such as a journal, newspaper, or newsletter.
  • An original publication and any exact copy, including a reprint[1], in any media, even when a reprint has a few additional pages such as an introduction or index.
  • A work that was originally published by two or more organizations with identical content and page numbering (e.g., Source:Armytage, George John. Pedigrees Made at the Visitation of Cheshire, 1613).
  • An original publication and a verbatim text transcript, even when it can't be guaranteed that there are no transcription errors. Include the transcript in the Repositories section of the Source page.
    • Ideally, citations based on the transcript should link to the transcript or at least indicate that it was used.
  • Two or more online databases that include essentially the same records, even if they don't cover exactly the same time period. The same records held by a government or church agency are also covered by the same Source page, and the government or church agency should be included in the Repositories section if known.
    • If the databases don't cover the same time period, make a note of the difference (e.g., "database A stops at xxxx while database B continues to grow as records are made publicly available"). Some examples: England and Wales. Civil Registration Death Index; Ohio, United States. County Marriages.
    • NOTE: See examples below of Source pages that I recently merged to conform to this convention. If you disagree with any of these merges, please let me know and let's discuss how to reword the convention.

Create separate Source pages for:

  • Each edition[1] of a book.
  • An original publication and a later publication with a different name that provides corrections and/or additions to the original.
  • A collection of actual records (or images of them) and an index-only book or database.
    • NOTE: This is a new suggested convention. It makes the distinction, for example, between the death certificates archived by a state vs. an online index-only database such as for California deaths, or between 2 online databases, of which only one has images.
    • We effectively make this distinction now because of the number of Source pages (over 3500 VR, about 1600 church records) with the word Index or Indexes in the title.
    • QUESTION: Do we want to make this distinction? One gives the user the ability to look at the image to check the accuracy of the index transcript (although I suspect most people don't on a routine basis) or look for additional information, while the other doesn't. An issue with making this distinction is that my impression is that some databases that used to be index-only are now getting films attached to them so that you can look at images - sometimes with a link to the exact image and sometimes by having to browse through many images, but I suspect that will also be improved over time.
  • Different levels of granularity. Some examples: a Source page for a census year for the entire country and separate Source pages for each county; a Source page for each of the 3 Civil Registration Indexes for England and Wales (birth, marriage, and death), and a separate Source page covering all 3 indexes (which corresponds to FreeBMD).
    • Note that separate Source pages for each county exist for older U.S. censuses, but are only sparsely created (as desired by contributors who want to use them) for more recently released censuses.
    • For more detail, see A note about the granularity of WeRelate Sources on the help page for source citation conventions.

Footnote:

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 The difference between a reprint and a new edition is that a reprint is an exact facsimile of the original (with possible additions such as an index), while a separate edition has new and/or revised content in the body of the work. A reprint maintains original page numbering for the body of the work, while a new edition typically does not.
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Why maintain data this way?

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Whether or not to create a Source page

Creating Source pages for transcripts of individual cemeteries could make selecting a Source page difficult, depending on the search criteria entered, especially since so many cemeteries have similar names.

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Single vs multiple Source pages

Creating a single Source page for two or more online databases that are based on the same records makes it easier for users to select a Source page for their citations. They don't have to look at the details of multiple similar Source pages to see which corresponds to the database, microfilm, or other media they used. An added benefit is that users can find all the online databases they can search without having to review several Source pages.

Creating Source pages with different levels of granularity:

  • Enables matching uploaded GEDCOM citations for:
    • Contributors who identified their sources at a granular level (e.g., a county's census ledger or a single parish register) without loss of citation details (e.g., county name)
    • Contributors who identified their sources at a less granular level (e.g., a national census or a database of parish records for a diocese)
  • Allows contributors to continue to cite sources in WeRelate according to their source citation habits, whether they were formed when using microfilm (granular level) or when using online databases (usually a broader scope).
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Populating data fields

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Source type

  • Select Government / Church records for records created for government purposes (e.g., birth, marriage, death, probate, deed, census records) or by religious organizations.
    • Exception: If someone compiled/transcribed records into a book and the name of the compiler/transcriber is known, select Book.
  • Select Website only if the contents of the website can't be categorized as any of the other types.
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Authors field

  • Enter each author, editor, or compiler on a separate line.
  • Enter (in the format surname, given name(s)) each name as it is listed on the title page of a book, excluding titles such as Dr. or Rev. Don't expand initials into full names even if another catalog has done so.
  • To indicate that someone was an editor or compiler, include the role in parentheses:
    • After the given name(s) when creating a page or editing the name on the first Author line
    • After the last name and before the comma for a name on the second or subsequent Author line
Important: Putting the role in parentheses when creating a Source page ensures that it doesn't become part of the page title (which is a WeRelate convention). Note that square brackets don't work for this.
Placing the role as indicated above ensures that the source citation will be formatted appropriately.
For example, if a book title is Genealogy of the Smith Family and the following are entered in the Author field:
Smith, John J (compiler)
Jones (ed), George
the Source page title will be:
Source: Smith, John J. Genealogy of the Smith Family
and the source citation will be:
Smith, John J (compiler), and George Jones (ed). Genealogy of the Smith Family.
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Title field

For all sources:

  • Include only the title, not the subtitle, which has its own field.
  • Capitalize each important word (i.e., not articles, conjunctions, or short prepositions). This follows the capitalization convention for most actual book titles.

For government or church records:

  • Since the page title combines the Place covered field with the Title field, omit the place name from the Title field so that the page title doesn't become excessively long. For example, if an online database is called California, U.S., Death Index, 1905-1939, enter Death Index, 1905-1939 in the Title field.
    • NOTE: This is the convention from the existing Help:Source page titles page, dating back as far as 2009.
    • NOTE: We discussed at the meeting the need to include the place name in the Title field to support searching, but that isn't needed since whatever is entered in the title field in the search form is searched in the page title (not the source title).
    • Currently, there are more Source pages for vital records without the place name in the source title than with (approx. 2:1). Similar for most other subjects when the source type is government / church records.
  • For census records, if there is an existing pattern for the same jurisdiction for other census years, be consistent with it. Consistency doesn't always exist, but it does for these national censuses (XXXX is the year):
    • XXXX U.S. Census Population Schedule
    • XXXX Census of Canada
    • XXXX Census Returns of England and Wales
    • XXXX Census Returns of Scotland
      • NOTE: 3 Source pages for Scotland say "Census Returns of Scotland for XXXX", while 9 pages (including duplicates of the 3) say "XXXX Scotland Census". A bunch of parish-level sources begin "Census Returns for". Before I change the existing national-level pages to read "XXXX Census Returns of Scotland" (and merge duplicates), I just want to check that we want to maintain this convention.
  • Enter the title in the primary language used in the records. English (and other) equivalents can be entered as alternate titles to support searching and selecting.
    • NOTE: This hasn't been documented before (that I am aware), but it is consistent with Source pages for Norwegian parish registers and most Norwegian census records, and sources in France. I think we should apply it to sources like the Drouin collection as well. Note that this is just for government and church records - book and periodical titles should always be in the language of the actual title.

For an online database that appears to be growing (that is, records are being added for earlier and/or more recent years):

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Publisher, Date issued, Place issued fields

For a book that has been reprinted, enter information for the original publication, not for the reprint. (Note that many Source pages created from data received from FamilySearch have the date of the reprint which should be corrected when noted.)

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Place issued field

Enter the place the source was published/issued, from smallest to largest jurisdiction. Not all levels need to be included and abbreviations are acceptable (e.g, Chicago, IL). (This field doesn't provide the place dropdown.)

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Subject dropdown checkboxes

For a periodical, you can select Family tree / history as the subject, although other subjects, such as Vital records can also be chosen.

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Why maintain data this way?

Using the language of the records for the title of government and church records is respectful of the organizations that created the records, generally consistent with other catalogs, and beneficial to users researching in their own country's records.

Including date ranges in the source title of a growing database requires someone to take responsibility to change the source title as the range changes (increasing the number of page redirects). If the date range is allowed to get out-of-date, users might not know whether to select the Source page.

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Examples of recently merged Source pages

I recently merged the following pages in keeping with the convention documented above, regarding having a single Source page for essentially the same data. If you disagree with any of these merges, please let me know and let's discuss how to reword the convention. Note that if we agree to the convention above for the source title for government / church records, I'll update and rename the first 4 to remove the redundancy in the page title.

This one was NOT merged due to the convention on different levels of granularity:

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