Thursday, April 12, 2012

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

While reading blogs this morning, I noticed that Legacy Family Tree 7.5.0.182 had been released in order to fix the 1940 U.S. Census source template.  So I updated my Legacy 7.5 program, and tried out the improved source template:

1)  I clicked on my father's name, opened his "Individual's Information" screen, and added a Fact for the 1940 Census.  I highlighted that Fact, clicked on the "Sources" icon and then clicked on "Add a New Source":


I entered "census" in the "What kind of source do you want to cite?" field above.  Note that I could have selected "census records" from the "choose the type of record from this list."  


2)  I clicked on "Search" and had to select from a very long list of census records.  Eventually, I found the 1940 U.S. Census with digital images:



3)  I clicked on the "1940 > Census records > United States > Federal census records > 1940 population schedule > Online images" line and clicked on the "Go" button.  The "Step 2. Fill in the fields below" page opened:



In the "Source Info" tab, I added information for the Source list name, state, county, website title, website URL, publish date, and format, as shown above.  Note that the database title ("1940 U.S. census"), the publisher (National Archives and Records Administration") and the Series ("T627") are already filled in.  


I could have added information in the "Text/Comments," "Repository," "Multimedia" and "Override" tabs also.


4)  I clicked on the "Save" button and the "Edit the Source Detail" screen opened.  Here, I added information for the City, Roll Number, Enumeration District, Sheet, Page, and Household Number.  



The screen above shows the information that I entered into the fields.


5)  I clicked on the Save button, and I was back to the "Assigned Sources" screen, and the Footnote/Endnote Citation, the Subsequent Citation and the Bibliography in the lower part of the screen:




The created Source Citations are (with the "Show Entire Source" radio button selected):

Footnote/Endnote Citation:
1940 U.S. census, Worcester County, Massachusetts, population schedule, Leominster, enumeration district (ED) 14-160, sheet 6-B, household 113, Bowers A. Fisher household; digital images, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com); citing National Archives and Records Administration microfilm T627, roll 1651. Cit. Date: 12 Apr 2012.  

Subsequent Citation:
1940 U.S. census, Worcester County, Massachusetts, pop. sch., Leominster, ED 14-160, sheet 6-B, house. 113, Bowers A. Fisher household. Cit. Date: 12 Apr 2012.  

Bibliography:
Massachusetts. Worcester County. 1940 U.S. census, population schedule. Digital images. Ancestry.com. http://www.ancestry.com : 2012.  

Creating this specific source citation was really easy using the Legacy Family Tree source template.  However, I would have to create a different master source citation for every County/State combination, since the Master source requires those elements.  

As stated previously, my preference is to create Free-form source citations (called "Basic Style" in Legacy Family Tree 7.5), that would have as elements for the Footnote/Endnote Citation:

Master Source entry:  1940 United States Census

Detail citation entry:  Worcester County, Massachusetts, population schedule, Leominster, enumeration district (ED) 14-160, sheet 6-B, household 113, Bowers A. Fisher household; digital images, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 12 Apr 2012); citing National Archives and Records Administration microfilm T627, roll 1651. 

The only change I made to the created citation was to put quotes around the database name, and put the "accessed date" element inside the website, both a la Evidence! Explained.  I also dislike abbreviations in my Footnotes.  

The resulting free-form citation from Legacy looks like:

1940 United States Census, Worcester County, Massachusetts, population schedule, Leominster, enumeration district (ED) 14-160, sheet 6-B, household 113, Bowers A. Fisher household; digital images, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 12 Apr 2012); citing National Archiv.  

Oops, it cut off the last parts of the citation detail.  Is this because there is a limit on the number of characters allowed for the citation detail?  I count 255 characters in the created citation above.  Is that a GEDCOM limitation?  Has this always been in the Legacy source citation details?  I don't think I've looked for it before.  


UPDATE 1:50 p.m.:  I just looked at my Legacy database source citations, with the database imported from RootsMagic, and many census source citations are truncated as shown above because the Citation Detail is too long for the allowable field.  I have hundreds of source citations longer than 255 characters in my RootsMagic database.

I hope that the next generation of GEDCOM (or successor) standards permit more than 255 characters in the source citation detail field.  I think that limitation is too limiting for modern source citations that often have fairly long citation details and cite the original source data that was incorporated into online databases..


Copyright (c) 2012, Randall J. Seaver

3 comments:

Tessa Keough said...

Interesting post - I am a lumper so I have one master source for the 1940 US Census and the detail for all the census entries includes the city/town, county, state. I have had no issue with the length of my entries and they are not cut off in the chronology report - what resport are you working in?

Randy Seaver said...

Tessa, are you using Legacy Family Tree? Or RootsMagic, or another program? RootsMagic doesn't have the 255 characterl imitation, I don't know about FTM and others.

I also have one Master source for each census year, and put everything else in the citation detail.

Geoff said...

Tessa is correct. Just leave the county or the state fields blank in the master source. You could add them to the source detail if you wish.