Help talk:How to Cite FamilySearch Collections

I have moved this question and comments from the page to this discussion page:

Where in FamilySearch can you enter citations in this form?
Using standard procedure, if you wish to add a source to an existing record, within a person's record you go to the "Sources about this Individual" area and you click the link "Add a source about this individual." A dialog opens that allows you to use drop-downs and data entry fields to generate a description of the source.

However, if you have already created an appropriate text description of the source in the above format, perhaps it is more efficient to simply type or paste the text. This would also allow you to efficiently cite the source repeatedly in reference to various pieces of data in different records. [Does this capability exist? If so, need to add explanation of where &amp; how this can be done.]

Answer:
This article was written specifically to describe how to create citaions for records found in digital collections in the Historical Records section of FamilySearch.org. The citations for records are entered into the Citing FamilySearch Historical Collections section of those articles. Examples of source citations may be added into the article under the subtopic" Examples of Source Citations for a Record in This Collection.

Citations for the collections themselves are found in the Sources of This Information section of the Historical Records wiki articles.

Thanks for comments. I will update the article according to your feedback.

Dorothy Horan

After consulting with citation experts the format of the citations has been altered to more closely represent concepts expressed in the book Evidence Explained.

The concept of having automatic citations created on the fly is currently being explored.

Dorothy Horan

Why don't your examples follow the widely accepted standards of genealogy research? By Evidence! Explained standards, the source citations should include information that would lead the reader to the actual original record, or as close to the original as possible.

For an online historical record collection like a US census record, that should include the National Archives Series number and Roll Number, and perhaps the FHL Microfilm number too.

We are following guidelines from Evidence Explained. The citation instructions listed here are for collection users to list their findings in an online database. There is a section prior to this one in each FamilySearch Historical Records collection wiki article entitled Sources of Information for This Collection which lives instructions for fully identifying the collection, including data about citing the original collection. It also includes a link to full instructions found in the wiki article entitled: How to Create Source Citations For FamilySearch Historical Records Collections

Dorothy Horan

Dorothy, this page links to several others. Do you want the links removed or changed to other pages?Lynda 17:27, 7 May 2012 (UTC)