Contents
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
General Style
Core fields
Simple Examples
Discussion with a relative
Family Bible
Birth, marriage and death certificates
UK Census
Event: Event Type Date Place Description
Source: Title
Repository: Name Type Media Type Call number
Citation: Date Volume/Page
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
- Gramps_3.4_Wiki_Manual_-_Main_Window#Citations_Category
- Sources
- Repositories_in_GRAMPS
- GEPS_023:_Storing_data_from_large_sources