How to cite census sources?

[christopher_n_lewis]

Hi

I am wondering if there is any sort of consensus on how to cite census sources, now that they are available in so many different formats, particularly those on-line and on CDs. I'm trying to devise a system whcih will let other people, not just myself, evaluate and track down the data if they need to.

I have a copy of Elizabeth Shown Mills book "Evidence! Citation & Analysis for the Family Historian", but before continuing with my own system thought it worthwhile to ask the knowledgable people on this list.

It seems to me that there are different levels of information. At a minimum there is the series/piece/folio/page information, and I like to include the Administrative County, Registration District and Sub-District (easier to recognise than all those numbers!).

Then I distinguish between records that come from a published transcription, (in which case the details of who, when and where the transcript is from are included) or if I did the transcription myself from an image (in which case I add whether the image is on film, fiche, CD-ROM or a download). I also make a note if I have first used somebody else's transcript, and later checked against an image. I don't say that the original images are from The National Archive (or PRO), I assume this is well known.

If I've used an index, I make a brief mention, to give credit, but without including all the bibliographic information. Do you think I should include all the information? And can anyone tell me who prepared the indexes used by Ancestry? For 1901 I say the index was by the PRO, and for 1881 I have 'transcribed by FFHS and indexed by LDS' - is this correct and sufficient?

For resources on the web, I've come to the conclusion that it is impossible to keep track of changing URLs, or how to deal with cases like the way The National Archives links to Ancestry I just include the main part of the URL for the page I'm looking at. 'Evidence!...' says that the date should be included, I'm not sure if it is really necessary. Any thoughts?

Sorry for rambling on, but I would like to know what other people do.
Christopher

[Guy Etchells]

Bearing in mind your second sentence, I would simply use the series/piece/folio/page information to cite census for any source which contained an image of the enumerator’s books. In addition I would add that the original records are held at the National Archives (N.A) as required by their copyright waiver and also name the publisher of the facsimile used.

This method would allow a researcher to access the original source when required.

When citing transcripts I take a different stance, one which I am sure many will disagree with, as it flies in the face of convention, but one which is done to differentiate between a primary and secondary source.
When citing transcripts I would cite as Transcript by (XY) of (year) census, series number, plus the required note viz. N.A.
This is not as helpful in allowing the researcher to find the original record but ensures that there can never be any doubt one source was a primary source and the other merely a transcript.

This of course is completely different than citing a source when doing a look-up where I would cite the publisher of the work, title, page etc.
Cheers
Guy