Source Citation for World War I Draft Registration Card

A reader asked me in email:  "How would you create a source citation for a World War I Draft Registration card that I found on Ancestry.com?"

The solution for me is relatively easy, and I'll do it two ways:

1)  In RootsMagic 6, I used the source template for "Draft Registrations, Images."  The source template field entries for my grandfather's World War I Draft Registration card found on Ancestry.com looks like this:

The fields and their entries that I used are:

*  Master Source (input data in red):  World War I Draft Registrations (Ancestry, template)

**  Database Title:  U.S. World War War Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918 [from the Ancestry database title]
** Format:  digital image
**  Creator/owner:  [left blank]
**  Website title:  Ancestry.com
** URL:  http://www.ancestry.com
** Title:  Selective Service System. World War I Selective Service System Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918. Washington, D.C. [from the Ancestry source information]
** Sub-title:  National Archives and Records Administration. M1509, 4,582 rolls [from the Ancestry source information]

*  Source Details (input data in blue):

**  Access type: [left blank, default = accessed]
** Access date:  9 October 2010 [the date I captured the image]
** Item of interest:  Worcester County, Massachusetts, Leominster City, Draft Board 14, Frederick Walton Seaver entry, dated 18 September 1918 [information specific to my grandfather's registration card]
** Film details: [left blank]
**  Annotation: [left blank]

The resulting source citation, in Footnote format, is:

"U.S. World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918," digital image, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 9 October 2010), Worcester County, Massachusetts, Leominster City, Draft Board 14, Frederick Walton Seaver entry, dated 18 September 1918; citing Selective Service System. World War I Selective Service System Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration. M1509, 4,582 rolls.

2)  My preference is to create free-form source citations so that they transfer via a GEDCOM upload well to other programs or online trees), but I try to emulate the source templates as much as possible.  Here are the source citation fields for a free-form source format of a World War I Draft Registration card:

The resulting free-form source citation (Footnote format) is:

"U.S. World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918," digital images, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com, : accessed 9 October 2010); Worcester County, Massachusetts, Leominster City, Draft Board 14, Frederick Walton Seaver entry, dated 18 September 1918.

The only little nit-picky issue in the free-form compared to the template citation is the comma after ancestry.com - did you notice that?  There seems to be no way to get rid of that (except to put the Ancestry URL in the "Page Number field also).

I put the information about the source of the source into the Source Comments section rather than in the source citation itself.

If you have the image visible on Ancestry.com, the time it takes to enter the information the first time is about two minutes (using copy/paste as much as possible); for a second citation using the same Master source, the time to input it is less than one minute.

So there you are, dear reader.  You can substitute the access date, county, city/town, draft board number, person's name and date registered for your own person by substituting your data in place of my data in the citations above.  Of course, if you found the information on a website other than Ancestry, you would substitute that information appropriately.

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Copyright (c) 2013, Randall J. Seaver