Find-A-Grave - Select a Source Template

This is part of a series of Blog Posts dealing with the Find-A-Grave website. In this case, We are going to Select and Use a Source Template for a Hint that lead to an Ancestry.com Index link to a Find-A-Grave website. These steps are generic enough so that any Source Template can be created based on information from the Find-A-Grave website.

Staring in the Sources Workspace, clicking on Add, right hand panel, then selecting New, will bring up the Template Keyword search screen. Will enter CEM for Cemetery. There are other ways to get here, but I find the Keyword Search is quicker.

I consider Find-A-Grave as a Derived Compiled data source. Because I want to have the many Find-A-Grave grouped by the Contributor to the Find-A-Grave website. I may have communications with, or want to have communications with that Contributor. We may share relatives, they may be in a location that I can't get to and may wish to seek help, I may want to transfer control of one of my Memorials to a member of the family, or I may want to request the memorial to me, as I am family. Being able to group by contributor, to me, is very helpful.

Once the Add ICON is selected, the New button is selected the list of Templates are presented. The last entry is the choice for this.

 

The Template Form will ask for Creator Surname and Creator forename(s) For these Ancestry entries, I enter "Web" for the Creator surname. The reason will be clearer shortly. The Creator Forename is "Ancestry.com". The Description Title is the Top Line of the Web Search screen show above. For these cases, I take the Top line of the "hit" screen, which has the title of the collection at Ancestry.com. In this case, "Maine, Find-A-Grave Index,  1778-2011". The Website Title is Ancestry.com, the URL is "www.ancestry.com" and the Year is taken from the Source information on that Web Search screen from Ancestry.com.

I add two more lines in the Comments, and they are what I put into the Citation Details and Citation Text. Citation Details is "online; accessed: " It's clear that this index is Online and the date it was accessed is imported. After reviewing the Reference Notes and looking at Evidence Explained! it determine what data has to be entered in the Citation Details and the Citation Text to get the desired Reference Note. I do this for all Source entries that I put into the Template format.

These two items will be copied and pasted into those two fields on the New Citation window for this Template.

All that was added to the Citation Detail is the date accessed.

The Citation Text reads: Index for [ full name ]. That is replace by the persons full name from the database, which may be a little more then what is on the hint. The name differences will be reflected in the Name Fact.

 

The resulting Reference Note will look like this:

 Some may stop here, but I will go a couple of extra steps. I Paste the Source information from the Ancestry.com website and Paste it into the Notes tab for the Citation.

For example:

Source Information:
Ancestry.com. Web: Maine, Find A Grave Index, 1778-2011 [database on-line]. Provo, UT. USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2012.
Original data: Find A Grave. Find A Grave. http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi: accessed 20 March 2012.
Description:
All data in this third-party database was obtained from Find a Grave. Ancestry.com does not support or make corrections or changes to the original database.

 This comes in really handy on other Sources, where a film number might be included.

One more additional step that I take is to do a Screen Capture of what I saw on the Web Search screen. I shows all of what was on that screen and I save it as a JPG file..

 Now to add this 'media' file to the Citation. Selecting the Citation and the Media Tab, I select Add New Media file.

 I locate that media (JPG) file on my hard drive and it will be added.

Before it is added, you will be asked to put this image into a Category. I use a Cemetery Category for this information.

Almost done. I want to put a description on that Media file. I use the Reference Note from the Citation and will paste that into the Description field. (hi-lite, CTRL+C)

Selecting the Pencil ICON, on the Media Tab is the Media Detail screen.

Where the Reference Note is pasted as seen below.

As mentioned before, this are just the steps that I use when following a Shaky Leaf for a Find-A-Grave Index entry. It is NOT required or needed. The actual time to do this is not long, but the end result, for this End User, has paid off in the past.

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Copyright © 2012 by H R Worthington