Citations

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Revision as of 00:29, 28 August 2012 by Jsherring (talk | contribs) (UK Census)
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Why Cite

You just want to explore your family tree, so why bother with all of this academic nonsense, right?

If you are just using Gramps to draw a quick family tree, then perhaps there is no need to bother with citations.

But if you want to share your family tree with other people, citations let you record how you know these things, and this record may last longer than you are around to explain.

Creating detailed citations can be time intensive and may seem to be a distraction from your research, but you will find the investment pays off later.

A simple family tree can be a little dry, but linking to related documents helps you embellish your family story.

And if you are like me, you may need a little help remembering how you came to some conclusion some months ago.

Guiding Principles

In order of importance:

  • Citations help provide evidence of the conclusions (or 'facts') in your tree
  • A citation should enable another researcher to easily identify the material you are referencing and how you came to some conclusion
  • Citations should be as simple as possible to record. Don't waste time on extensive detail if you wont continue to be so thorough.
  • Record a citation as soon as you can, before you forget or lose the details
  • Adopt a good style early on to avoid rework later - you will probably never bother to fix hundreds of sloppy references
  • Provide citations for as much of your tree as you can.
  • Record your references in a way that will still be relevant in many years. URLs are useful now but don't last.
  • Be consistent in your citations
  • Even a short or sloppy citation is better than no citation
  • Follow citation style guides if you can. A lot of thought has gone into what to record.

If you are just starting out with your family tree, then you will probably want to just get started recording people and events in you tree. After a while, start adding citations to your tree. Then before you have gone too far with recording citations, occasionally review your citation style and consider how it might be when your tree is much larger and used by someone else.

Sources, Repositories and Citations

Using Gramps Citations

Expand on Gramps_3.4_Wiki_Manual_-_Main_Window#Citations_Category

General Style

Core fields

Simple Examples

Discussion with a relative

Family Bible

Birth, marriage and death certificates

UK Census

Event
Event Type asdf
Date asdf
Place asdf
Description asdf
Source
Title asdf
Repository:
Name (shared) asdf
Type (shared) asdf
Media Type (not shared) asdf
Call number (not shared) asdf
Citation:
Date asdf
Volume/Page asdf


US Census

FamilySearch

Ancestry.com records

More Examples

Newspaper clipping

Newspaper Archive

Multi-volume parish registers

Census records spanning pages

Census records spanning addresses

Ancestry.com user trees

Imported GEDCOM file

Reusing 2nd-hand citations

See Also

External Links