FTM2014 and Ancestry Member Trees - New Process for Citations

What a great learning experience about How to Cite Public Member Trees.

It started with my first attempt at selecting the "right" Family Tree Maker Template

FTM2014 and Ancestry Member Trees

I shared that in the Evidence Explained Forum (links in the next blog post). I hadn't selected the right Template and was referred to the QuickSheets, also created by Elizabeth Shown Mills

FTM2014 and Ancestry Member Trees - an Update

The response to the posting in the Evidence Explained Forum brought forward the finer points of a Citation.

FTM2014 and Ancestry Member Trees - What Next

This is ALL GOOD. What an honor to have Elizabeth Shown Mills help this user of Family Tree Maker understand the art of a citation.

Also, I have seen several colleagues follow suit, using their genealogy programs to show their followers that same process. 

+Shannon Thomas, a Legacy Family Tree has a blog post:

Citing Ancestry.com Member Trees in Legacy Family Tree

and my friend +Randy Seaver did a blog post for Roots Magic

RootsMagic 6 Source Citations for an Ancestry.com Public Member Tree

Reality Check:

Clearly, I have the most "clean up" work in the area of a Citation using the Template feature. That is what I am going to discuss here.

I selected the Online Database, National Archives (United States) as the Template, as it provided the information that was needed for the Source information in the Reference Note. Details of that are in the Update blog post.

Since I may use other Public Member Trees (Ancestry Member Trees) in the future, I don't want to have to Remember what goes where and what I have to change. I have put those notes into the Source Template COMMENTs.

Here is the Edit Template Screen:

That is the large (I enlarged it here) box at the bottom of the Template Screen.

This is the part of the Comment that reminds me what goes into the Citation Detail field

Citation Detail:

"[ Tree Name ]" family tree by [ tree name owner ] profile for [ name, (  [birth information - death information ] undocumented / documented data

This defines the Tree Name that is put into quotes; the text family tree by followed by the tree name owner; the text profile for and the information for the profile that I am looking for, with any information on that profile that will help identify which profile I am looking at. That is followed by either the data is documented or not. The brackets remind me to enter that data from the Profile.

The next step, because the Reference Note information is filled in by the Template and the Citation detail, that needs to be edited next. 

From the Template Comments

Reference Note:

Change The National Archives to Ancestry.com

Put  the "accessed" date inside of the parenthesis (http://www.ancestry.com) with a ":" so that it looks like  (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed  ## Month YYYY) 

This reminds me to change The National Archives from the hidden part of the Template to Ancestry.com and I am reminded to carefully Edit the URL piece of the Reference Note. Adding a space after .com and adding a colon and the date. I use 09 April 2014. That date format is a change for me, based on the Evidence Explained conversation.

The next step is the information that goes into the Citation Text field.

Citation text

Tree owner contact information

Ancestry Member Tree of [ name ] if ancestry.com email is used or email address

Copy the updted Reference Note into this field in case the Reference Note has to be Reset

Copy profile URL into the Web Address

No check marks in Citation text or Web Address

Couple of points here. I want the contact information here. Remembering that Ancestry.com has an internal email system I could put the tree owners, ancestry user name or I can spell out the name of the tree owner. That is what I have done here, because I know the tree owner. I did NOT include the email address in these screen captures, for obvious reasons, but it's in my file. I want the Citation Text to have the information needed to contact the tree owner.

That information and the direct link to the profile page is in the Web Address field but I do not want them in the Reference Note. The Evidence Explained documents so not call for the full URL. The Web Site, ancestry.com is sufficient.

The final note in the Comments:

If the public tree has documentation enter that into the Research Log and create a task to locate that source information

That reminds me that IF the tree has documentation, I want to locate that information myself. I am NOT going to copy or download it from the Ancestry Member Tree. I want to look at it myself. So, I create a Research Log identifying any Source Information in detail, and create a ToDo list for that person to locate that source material.

The Reference note now looks like this:

"Public Member Tree", database, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : 04 April 2014); "Cowan Mulliner Woodruff Kerr" family tree by Crista Cowan, profile for Richard Ridgway (b. 1679, Bucks, Pennsylvania - d. 1718, d. Burlington, New Jersey, USA) undocumented data

I'll do another blog post in more detail on the information that I gather from an Ancestry Member Tree.
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Copyright © 2014 by H R Worthington