Tuesday, April 17, 2012

1940 U.S. Census Source Citation in RootsMagic 5 - Census Image Source Template

In 1940 U.S. Census Source Citation in RootsMagic 5 - Free-Form Template yesterday, I created a Free-form source citation for my grandfather's entry in the 1940 Census found on a digital image on Ancestry.com using RootsMagic 5.

I want to demonstrate the process used to create a Source citation for this record using a specific Census Source Template in RootsMagic 5.

1)  From Frederick Walton Seaver's "Edit Person" page, I clicked on the 1940 U.S. Census Fact and clicked on the "Sources" button (on the right, below the Fact entry fields), and then clicked on the "Add New Source" button (top left).  The list of Source Types opened, and I selected "Census, U.S. Federal (online images)" (this is the only one that fits the source that I'm using - the digital images on Ancestry.com): 



2)  After clicking "OK" the Source Template opened and I added information to the fields for the Source, including (my entries in ""):

*  Country = [blank]
*  Year and Type = "1940 United States Census"
*  Jurisdiction = Worcester County, Massachusetts"
*  Schedule = "Population Schedule"
*  Item Type = "Digital images"
*  Website = Ancestry.com"
*  URL = "http://www.ancestry.com"
*  Credit Line = "citing National Archives Microfilm Publication T627, Roll 1651".

I also added to the Citation Detail fields, including (my entries in ""):

*  Civil Division = "Leominster"
*  Enumeration District = "14-181"
*  Page ID = "Sheet 9-A"
*  Household ID = "Family #202"
*  Person of Interest = "Frederick Seaver household"
*  Access Type = "Accessed"
*  Access Date = "12 April 2012"



Having completed all of the fields, I clicked on "OK" and was asked to give this source a Master Source name.  I typed in "1940 U.S. Census - Worcester County, MA (Roll 1651) (Ancestry.com)":


4)  clicking on "OK" brought up the Source Summary:



The completed set of source citations as presented are (lower left-hand portion of the screen above):


Footnote: 
1940 United States Census, Worcester County, Massachusetts, population schedule, Leominster, enumeration district (ED) 14-181, Sheet 9-A, Family #202, Frederick Seaver household; digital images, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 12 April 2012); citing National Archives Microfilm Publication T627, Roll 1651.
Short Footnote: 
1940 United States Census, Worcester County, Massachusetts, Population Schedule, Leominster, ED 14-181, Sheet 9-A, Family #202, Frederick Seaver household.
Bibliography: 
Massachusetts. Worcester County. 1940 United States Census, population schedule. Digital Images. Ancestry.com. http://www.ancestry.com : 2012.
Repository:
Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com) (Provo, Utah, USA)


If you check Evidence! Explained, or the QuickSheet for Citing Ancestry.com Databases & Images, you can see that the above citations almost perfectly match the standard citation formats.  Compare the Short Footnote and Bibliography entries above with the ones I created using the Free-form source citations and you can see some differences (mainly because I have limited information in the Short Footnote field).  

One of the drawbacks in using the RootsMagic 5 Source Template for this specific source is that I need to create a source for every County and every Roll number in the County because that information goes into the Source field that is used for every Citation Detail.  If a researcher has only a few citations for this specific census year in their database, this is not much of a problem.  However, if a researcher has hundreds of Census citations for a specific year, this becomes a more challenging task.  That's one reason I'm using a Free-form source template rather than a specific Census source template.  The other reason is that a GEDCOM representation of the Source Template citation gets mangled when imported to other software programs and online family trees.

The time taken to create this citation was about the same as the free-form citation - about two minutes.

I did this same sort of exercise in:

*  Family Tree Maker 2012:  Creating a 1940 U.S. Census Source Citation in Family Tree Maker 2012

*  Legacy Family Tree 7.5:  1940 U.S. Census Source Citation with Legacy Family Tree 7.5


*  RootsMagic 5 (Free-form source): 1940 U.S. Census Source Citation in RootsMagic 5 - Free-Form Template

The URL for this post is: http://www.geneamusings.com/2012/04/1940-us-census-source-citation-in_17.html

Copyright (c) 2012, Randall J. Seaver

2 comments:

RootsMagic said...

Randy,

Make sure to watch our webinar on May 17th to learn a solution to that drawback you mentioned. ;-)

- Bruce

Unknown said...

Thanks for this. I'm trying to get better at citing sources.