Friday, November 9, 2012

Email Source Citation in RootsMagic 5

I am happy to see Russ Worthington back in genealogy and FTM action after the Hurricane Sandy problems - he posted a very helpful blog today about "Citing As You Go - What About Email?" on his Family Tree Maker User blog.

I thought it might be interesting to see how a source citation crafted by the RootsMagic 5 source template might look.  There are three source templates for E-mail messages in RootsMagic 5:

E-mail message
Private, Personal-E-Mail, writer as lead element
Ref: [E!, p 80]

*  E-mail, personal, privately held, by writer
Private Holdings, Personal E-Mail; writer as lead element; see also Correspondence, personal
Ref: [EE, p 154-155 (Ref: QC-3, p 113)]

*  E-mail, personal, privately held, filed by collection
Private Holdings, Personal-E-Mail, collection as lead element in bibliography; see also Correspondence, personal
Ref: [EE, QC-3, p 113]   

Because my email was a short series, I chose the second source template listed above.

Here is the Source Template screen for one email:



The "Master Source" fields are:

*  Sender
*  Writer's location
*  Writer's e-contact
*  Item type
*  Recipient
*  Researcher
*  Contact data
*  Street address
*  City address
*  Provenance

The "Source Details" fields are:

*  Subject line
*  Record date
*  File
*  Research series
*  Collection
*  Date held

I entered the information that I thought was appropriate, and you can see the Footmnote, Short Footnote and Bibliography citations created using this source template in the screen above.  The Footnote is:

xxxxx Dill, San Diego, Calif., [e-mail for private use], to Randy Seaver, e-mail, 1 May 2012, "Albert Freeman Dill," Local Folders: Surnames: Dill-Horton-Eastham; privately held by Randy Seaver, [e-mail & address for private use], Chula Vista CA 91911, 2012.

The "Master Source" information is in red above, and the "Source Details" in blue.

I also added the text of the email to the Marriage Fact Note for Albert Freeman Dill:



This was instructive and interesting.  The source templates make this pretty easy.

I wasn't sure what to put into the "File" line in the Source Details - I chose my email local folder name.  If I had saved the email to my computer file system, I would have put the file folder name and file name.  If I had printed the email and put it in a paper file folder or surname notebook, I would have added that to the "Research series" or "Collection" fields.

The URL for this post is:  http://www.geneamusings.com/2012/11/email-source-citation-in-rootsmagic-5.html

Copyright (c) 2012, Randall J. Seaver

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