Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Exploring Family Tree Maker 2012 - Post 20: Using a Generic Source Citation Template

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See all posts in this series at Exploring Family Tree Maker 2012 Compendium.

One of my major criteria for selecting a "preferred" genealogy management program is the ease in creating source citations. I want to demonstrate the source citation creation process in Family Tree Maker 2012 in a number of posts for several different types of records, both for my own education and, hopefully, to help others navigate this fairly complex process.

In Exploring Family Tree Maker 2012 - Post 19: Creating U.S. Census Source Citations, I showed how to create United States Census source citations for records on Ancestry.com using two different Source Citation Templates in FTM 2012.  Unfortunately, neither of them created a "perfect" source citation that matched Evidence! Explained or QuickSheet standards. 

In Comments to that post, Jeff suggested:

"Randy, my first guess would have been the "Online Commercial Site - Generic (Census, Digital Image by Year and Location)" template. I tried it but it too differs from EE. I commented late on some of your earlier FTM citation posts, but I'm about convinced that the only practical approach is to use a program's Free Form source "template" (or really non-template). I've wasted so much time trying to get templates to work right (compared to EE), including experimenting the way that you have been. Unfortunately, FTM doesn't have a true Free Form option. It does have a "Basic" template but it is limiting as well."

Russ Worthington suggested the "Online Commercial Site - Generic (Census, Digital Image by Year)" template to me in email after my post was published. 

1)  Let's look at the "Online Commercial Site - Generic (Census, Digital Image by Year)" template.  In order to make this source citation as close to EE standards as possible, I had to "play with it" a bit.  I got there using this mouse thread for my particular 1900 US Census source citation:

a.  Go to  "People" workspace, and "Person" view for my great-grandfather, Frank Walton Seaver.
b.  Select (single click on it) the 1900 Census Fact.
c.  In the right-hand panel in the "Source" tab, click on "New" and select "Add New source citation."
d.  In the "Add Source Citation for Census for ..." window, click the "New" button
e.  In the "Source template" field, type "census"
f.  Pick "Online Commercial Site - Generic (Census, Digital Image by Year)" template from the list.
g.  In the "Add Source" window, fill in the template fields with:

**  Census year:  1900
**  Country: [blank]
**  Schedule:  T623
**  Website title: Ancestry.com
**  URL: http://www.ancestry.com
**  Year:  population

Here is the "Add Source" screen:


h.  Click "OK" when finished
i.  Back in the "Add Source citation..." window, enter the Citation Detail and Citation Text into the template fields. 

Here is the screen for this window:


j.  I unchecked the box for "Include citation text in reference note."
k.  Click on the Reference Note tab:


The completed Reference Note source citation is:

1900 census, population schedule, Worcester County, Massachusetts, Leominster, Enumeration District (ED) 1645, sheet 16-A, Page 264 (stamped), dwelling 258, family 371, Frank W. Seaver household; citing National Archives microfilm publication T623, Roll 692; digital image, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com).

The red part is the citation detail, and the purple part is generated by the source template.  Note that I had to put the NARA publication number and roll number in the citation detail.

For reference purposes, the Evidence! Explained citation crafted for this Fact is (from Post 19):

1900 U.S. census, Worcester County, Massachusetts, population schedule, Leominster, Enumeration district (ED) 1645, sheet 16-A, p. 264 (stamped), dwelling 258, family 371, Frank W. Seaver; digital image, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 21 April 2009), citing National Archives microfilm publication T623, roll 692.

IMHO, this FTM 2012 citation is a better representation of the EE format than the other two citations crafted from the specific Census Source Templates in FTM 2012. 

A user could use this template for all source citations for a specific year.

2)  I did the same exercise using the "Online Commercial Site - Generic (Census, Digital Image by Year and Location)" template suggested by Jeff.  Here's is the best I could do to match an EE crafted source citation:

1900 census, population schedule, Leominster, Worcester, Massachusetts, Enumeration District (ED) 1645, sheet 16-A, page 264 (stamped), dwelling 258, family 371, Frank W. Seaver household; citing National Archives microfilm publication T623, Roll 692; digital image, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com).

The red part is the citation detail, and the purple is from the source template.  Again, it is not perfectly to EE standards.

I had to add the NARA microfilm publication number and roll to the citation detail.  There is a template field for the microfilm publication, but it doesn't print out in the Reference Note citation. 

In this "Online Commercial Site - Generic (Census, Digital Image by Year and Location)" template, the EE format could be created by adjusting the order of the source template elements to print (purple is source template entries, red is citation detail entries, and blue is text added by the program):

*  Census year:  1900 U.S. census
*  Country: [blank]
*  County:  Worcester County
*  State: Massachusetts

* Schedule: population schedule
*  Civil jurisdiction:  Leominster
*  Citation detail:  Enumeration District (ED) 1645, sheet 16-A, page 264 (stamped), dwelling 258, family 371, Frank W. Seaver household
*  text:  digital image
*  Website:  Ancestry.com [in italics]
*  URL:  (http://www.ancestry.com)
Access date:  21 January 2009
*  text: citing
*  NARA microfilm and roll number:  National Archives microfilm publication T623, roll 692.

In order to exactly match the EE format for this source citation, FTM 2012 would have to add only the access date and the NARA Roll number to the source template, add the required text, and get the punctuation right. 

For this template, the user would have to create a separate source citation for each roll of microfilm used.

Thank you to Jeff and Russ for their suggestions, and I hope that this has enlightened FTM 2012 users, my readers, and the FTM developers. 

Some comments:

1) Jeff noted in his comment:

"...I'm about convinced that the only practical approach is to use a program's Free Form source "template" (or really non-template)."

I agree completely, and came to that conclusion myself back in May 2011, mainly because of the failure of the different programs and online trees in transferring template source citations adequately through GEDCOM to another program or website.

2)  Frankly, Family Tree Maker's source templates are the most difficult to use of the four programs I currently have (FTM 2012, FTM 16, Legacy Family Tree 7, RootsMagic 4), and the source citations that FTM 2012 crafts do not match the Evidence! Explained formats well.  I wish that it did, and that this issue will be addressed in the next program release.

3)  Some persons in the genealogy field will say "why are you so nitpicky about this?  Just use what they provide and get on with citing your sources."  My opinion is that other programs have provided EE-quality source citations using source templates, and that FTM 2012 should also be able to create them.  It is frustrating to take the time to use the source templates in the programs and have the result not match the EE formats. 

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