Help:Conventions/Source citation

Quick reference

Usage

Create source citations to:

• present evidence supporting name, gender, relationships, facts/events, and information presented in the narrative
• identify significant bibliographic resources relevant to this specific person or family

Source selection

Focus

Include only sources relevant for the person or family the page is about.

• Don't include sources about places the person lived or events they took part in.

Specific guidelines:

• Sources supporting facts/events specific to a person (e.g., birth date/place) should go on the Person page.
• Sources supporting facts/events specific to a couple (e.g., marriage date/place) should go on the Family page.
• Sources supporting events such as residence (which can go on either the Person or Family page) should go on the page where the event is recorded.

• Sources showing parentage should go, at a minimum, on the child's Person page.
• Sources that link several children to their parent(s) can also go on the Family page (e.g., for a census record), or the Person page of one of the parents (e.g., for a will).
  • Doing so can be particularly useful when online trees tend to include children who don't belong in the family.
  • Doing so can also be useful when birth dates of the children are unknown, and the source indicates (or strongly implies) birth order.

• Sources that identify the two people involved in a marriage should go, at a minimum, on the Family page of the marriage. If the parents (or previous spouse) of either or both spouses are identified, they should be included in the source citation, to demonstrate that the correct people have been linked on the Family page.
• Sources that link a person to both parents and spouse (e.g., a marriage record or something like John Smith deeded his daughter Mary Jones, wife of Thomas ...) can also go on their Person page, especially if there is no other good source identifying their parents.
• Secondary sources that show that a person had multiple spouses should go on the Person page, as they provide the proof that the person was involved in all the marriages.

Secondary sources

• If one source relies on another, include only the original source unless the second is significantly more available to researchers.
• Sources that cannot be located by another user should be removed. This includes GEDCOM and FTW files that do not identify an author and dead links.
• Personal notes or webpages that contain no sources should be removed if there are any other sources for the information. This includes Research of X or Personal files of Y, as well as online family trees.
  • However, if a person was recently deceased and official records or obituaries are not publicly available, a source citation indicating that information came from "family records" or an online tree is appropriate, to allow the reader a sense of how credible the information might be (e.g., a birthdate known to be supplied by a grandchild might be accepted more readily than one found in an online tree, with no indication of the ultimate source).

Conflicting sources

Sources that provide conflicting information (e.g., different year of birth) should be retained if none or them are obviously in error (e.g., typos). Use a note to explain. The better supported information (which may be a toss-up) should be used for primary events, and the other sources for "alt" events.

Erroneous sources

As a general rule for sources that contain disproven information, keep sources likely to be cited by others, but remove unimportant or obscure ones. It is better to explain that a widely cited source is incorrect than to ignore it and risk having data changed to match the incorrect information.

• Keep sources that are very frequently used for an area (for example, in New England, Savage and Great Migration), with the erroneous information identified and/or a note indicating why it is not reliable (or pointer to the discussion elsewhere).
  • An option is to use strikethrough to indicate information that has been disproven.
  • The addedcomment template is useful for notes.
• Keep sources that are often cited (i.e., the first book published about an immigrant), flagging erroneous information and/or including a note indicating why it is not reliable.
• Less important sources, including publications that repeat information from the above sources and, especially, amateur online content, should be retained only if they also have some useful, not disproven content. The erroneous information should be addressed only if it is included in a quote or for context.
  • For example, a county history may have a biography listing the wrong origins for a person's father, but is otherwise interesting and not contradicted by other better sourced information. Quote interesting portions of the bio, and if they include the incorrect origins, add a note at the end.
  • On the other hand, an online tree that has incorrect dates does not need to be cited, retained, or commented on.

Bibliographic sources

Books, journal articles, and web sites that go into significantly more detail about the person or family, but were not directly used as a source, can also be included if they are likely to be of interest to a reader. Care should be taken to avoid outdated or poorly sourced material. If a person was particularly famous and the subject of many books, either limit the bibliographic sources to a select few, or refer the reader to Wikipedia for a bibliography.

Don't include sources that only provide context to a person's life (e.g., a book on the U.S. Civil War). These can be identified on Article or Category pages instead. Sources about places can be identified on the applicable Place page, and shouldn't be included on Person or Family pages unless there is significant interesting content specific to the person or family.

Content

A good source citation includes:

• identification of the source itself (e.g., the book, journal, parish register, or web site)
• location of the relevant information within the source (e.g., volume/page number)
• relevant information from the source

Excerpts or abstracts (consistent with copyright limitations) should be included for all source citations when possible. WeRelate pages are not static, and while it may be true today that a source citation supports the person's birth date, if the birth date gets changed, that same source citation will appear to support the new date when it actually disagrees. This is avoided if an excerpt or abstract makes it clear what the source actually says.

Quotations from works under copyright should be limited to the information required to support a fact or a piece of information in the narrative. Rather than copy a lengthy discussion of the evidence, summarize it or just mention that the author supports conclusions with a discussion of the evidence. It is entirely appropriate to encourage future researchers to read the source itself if they wish to understand the subtleties and limitations of an argument.

If a source is quoted or abstracted in the narrative, there is no need to repeat the quote or summarization in the source citation. Just make sure to include a reference in the narrative to the source citation to let the reader know where the information came from.

Format

Source content is more important than format, but reasonably consistent format makes source citations easier to read. Incorporating relevant information such as page number and/or linking to online sources can help researchers find additional information of interest.

WeRelate provides several fields to help with consistent presentation of source citations, with flexibility in their use. Here are some suggestions and conventions for those who want guidance on how to organize their source citations.

Source (type)

The source can be a regular Source or a MySource. If neither is applicable, accept the default Citation only.

Title

For a regular Source or a MySource, use find/add to link to the Source or MySource page. For a Citation, enter the name or description of the source.

If the source is a book with multiple editions, be sure to link to the Source page for the correct edition. (Otherwise, page numbers might not be the same, making it frustrating for future researchers to locate the relevant information.)

A note about the granularity of WeRelate Sources

WeRelate Source pages were initially created automatically from listings of genealogical sources. For record collections (e.g., vital, church, or census records), separate Source pages were often created for subsets of the collection, depending on how records were organized in registers or on microfilm. For example, U.S. census records were recorded on ledgers by county, and separate Source pages were created for each county. Source pages for parish registers might be for a parish (for original records) or diocese (for bishop's transcripts) and year range.

Before the introduction of Browse facets, these more granular Source pages allowed researchers to find relatives living in the same area as an ancestor by looking at What links here on the Source page. However, many users found broader Source pages (such as a page covering the entire 1900 U.S. census) more useful, and these exist side-by-side with the more granular sources. You are free to choose whichever works for you. As new collections (such as the 1950 U.S. census or the Massachusetts, Town Clerk, Vital and Town Records collection of images) became available online, Source pages tended to become less granular.

When using a less granular source, ensure that relevant information (such as census location) is still included somewhere in the source citation - in the record name field, the volume / pages field, or the text / transcription location field.

Record name

For a specific record

Record name can be used for the name of the specific record used as the source. For example:

• a specific marriage certificate
• a specific household in a census
• a specific page of an online tree or a site such as Find A Grave

Example: Record name used to identify a Find A Grave memorial page (using the fgravemem template to create a link):

This displays as:

For a set of records

Alternately, record name can be used to identify a set of records within a source comprised of multiple sets of records. For example:

• a census location (for census records)
• a town (for vital records)
• a parish and optionally year range (for parish registers or bishop's transcripts)
• a cemetery (for gravestone inscriptions and/or photos)

Example 1: Record name used to identify a census location (where https://www... is a URL):

This displays as:

Example 2: Record name used to identify a cemetery, with volume / pages used for the memorial page. This is an alternate way of using the fields from that in the example above where the memorial page was in the record name field.

This displays as:

For a journal article

By convention, record name is also used when citing a journal, to identify the author and title of the article within the journal, e.g., Smith, John. The Hudson family of Windham, CT.

Example: Record name used to identify a journal article:

This displays as:

Volume / pages

Volume number and/or page number(s) where the information can be found. Common practice is to place a colon between volume number and page number(s), e.g., 5:313-15 (but vol. 5, pp. 313-15 works just as well). If citing from a journal, you can include the year (and optionally month or quarter) of publication in parentheses after the volume number, e.g., 142(1988):17-24.

This field can also be used for one or more of the following (in conjunction with volume/page number, where applicable):

• image number
• microfilm roll and frame number
• microfiche card number

Some Source pages cover multiple publications, such as those created for The Massachusetts Town Vital Records Project. When using these Source pages, the volume / pages field can be used for a brief identification of the specific publication (along with a volume number if it has more than one volume) plus the page number where the information is found. Alternately, you can identify the specific publication in the record name field, since it represents a set of records within a larger collection.

Example: Volume / pages used to identify the specific publication, volume number and page number:

This displays as:

Date

This doesn't have a fixed purpose.

It can be used for date the information was accessed (particularly relevant for online sources that change from time to time, such as other genealogy wikis). If used for this purpose, include the word "accessed" for clarity.

It can be used for the date a census was taken (either the official enumeration date or the date at the top of a ledger page, which might be different) if this appears to be relevant (e.g., to support the date a child was born).

It can be used for the date of a newspaper issue, although this can go in the volume / pages field instead.

Note: Since Source pages include publication dates of books, there shouldn't be a need to enter publication date here.

Text / transcription location

Enter relevant text from the source, as a direct quote or a summary (try to make it clear which it is). If there is a lengthy transcription (e.g., of a will), it is better to include an abstract here and a link to the transcript, whether it is on a WeRelate Transcript page or an external website.

A single source citation can be used for various pieces of information found on different pages of the same book or journal article (e.g., birth date on one page and death date several pages later). If doing so, be kind to the future researcher by indicating alongside each piece of information the page on which it was found.

Notes

Preferably, the source citation text field includes only information found in the source, while commentary (e.g., an interpretation not found in the source, or a note about conflicts with other sources) is placed in a separate note field, linked by reference (e.g., N2). In display mode, the reader can't tell the difference between what is in the text field and what is in a note field, but this organization can help future researchers avoid accidentally removing source information that they thought was commentary (or vice versa).

More importantly, regardless of how fields are used, the reader should be able to distinguish between information you cited or summarized from the source and commentary on it. If the distinction is not obvious from the content/tone, add a tag such as Note: or Comment: before the commentary.

Images

If you have uploaded an image supporting the citation, it can be linked by reference (e.g., I2).

Links

If the source is available online, include a link to the specific page or record used, as a kindness to future researchers (including yourself).

Encase links in square brackets to suppress display of the URL (long URL's can adversely affect page layout). If the citation has a record name or page number, the link can be added to it. For example, [https://www.book/vol3/page10 3:10] will display as 3:10 with a link. Alternately, the link can be placed in the text / transcription location field, with or without a display description. See Help:Formatting for more information on how to format links.

When source images are available on multiple external web sites, links to free sites are preferred. However, if a link has already been created to a paid web site, don't remove it - simply add another link to the free site. This is because sometimes a site loses its permission to display images, and an alternate link might become the only working link.

Note that templates exist to create links to certain other sites. See Cross reference templates for a list.