I’m trying to get my head around the various fields in creating a source & citation. I’ve watched various videos, but nothing seems to be specific enough to answer my questions. If, for example, I want to cite an obituary that I’m seeing on Newspapers.com, what fields hold the information? Are the source name and citation name (and item ID?) the same in this instance? (Or is the source name just the newspaper and the obituary within it a citation?) Where do I put in Newspapers.com and the date I accessed it? Is there anywhere to get a walk-through that shows lots of different types of sources being entered? Or a place that explains what RM envisioned the fields to mean?
To a certain extent, you just enter the data into the source fields and RM does the rest for you. Except that it really isn’t that simple.
For one thing, sometimes one of the field names is so generic and amorphous that it’s hard to figure out what it means. In the case of RM’s obituary template, I think the ItemID is such a field. It’s really just a place to put the person’s name. I made my own template for obituaries and the name of my field for the person’s name is DeceasedName rather than ItemID.
For another thing, RM will generate a Citation name for you but it will not generate a Source Name for you. For obituaries, you could use something like the newspaper name.
Unfortunately, RM’s Obituary template does not provide a place to enter the Web site name such as newspapers.com. You could make a copy of the template and add a field for the Web site name. Another alternative is to use one of the Newspaper templates instead of the Obituary template, such as Newspaper, Online Archives or Newspaper, Online Images. These templates are a better fit for newspapers.com than is the Obituary template.
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Well that’s just it: I don’t know what the source fields mean and can’t find information anywhere that explains it. I’ve tried all the possibly relevant templates and tried to generate my own, but what RM then generates as a citation looks nothing like a real citation. I’ve gotten so frustrated trying to figure it out that I’m leaning towards abandoning it and just writing propers sources in the notes. Does RM have information anywhere that explains what the fields are, or is everyone just making up their own system?
The Source and Citation field templates that come with RM are strongly influenced by guides from Elizabeth Shown Mills “Evidence Explained” (EE) and others. Many of the RM fields directly take their name from them. Within RM, when you are adding a Source and picking a template, there’s a brief description that identifies where the related template from EE (or others) comes from.
You can read this Help article for more details.
To deeply understand the meanings of the fields, you would need to read the associated books. (EE is also available online for a subscription.)
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The Obituary template in RM is not based on Evidence Explained. Rather, it’s based on an earlier work by Elizabeth Shown Mills called Evidence! I suspect that the reason that the Obituary template in RM is not based on Evidence Explained is that you will be very hard put to find anything about citing obituaries in Evidence Explained. Rather, Evidence Explained seems to want to treat obituaries as newspaper articles. I have the new 4th Edition of Evidence Explained, and I can’t find anything about obituaries in either the table of contents or in the index at the back of the book.
My personal opinion is that it is the obituariness of obituaries that is important, not the newspaper articleness. And indeed, many obituaries these days are never published in a newspaper. But they are still obituaries. So I don’t think obituaries should be cited simply as if they were newspaper articles.
But as to the point about RM’s source templates being hard to use, I share that frustration. I’m an experienced RM user and an experienced genealogist, and I found RM’s source templates to be very difficult to use when they were first introduced in RM4. I couldn’t figure out which sourcing data to put into which fields in the templates. So I didn’t use them. Instead, I continued using free form templates until I got around to defining my own templates that made sense to me. Your mileage may vary. Lots of RM users seem to be very successful in using RM’s source templates.
When I was still using free form templates, I would always start a new source and citation by copying an existing source and citation that was similar to the new one I was making. And even with my own templates that I understand fairly well, I almost never create a new source and citation from scratch. Instead, I copy an existing one that’s very similar to the new one I am making and then edit the copy as needed. I think that’s one of the best strategies to use to make good sources and citations. Of course, I had to spend extra time getting the first few sources and citations made, because the first ones really did have to be created from scratch.
If you wish to create sources and citations from scratch, you can do so using the free form template. You don’t have to define your own templates if you do not wish to do so. There are really only two fields to fill in if you use the free form template. One is called the Footnote field and the other is called the Page Number field. These two fields correspond exactly to the way sources and citations are stored in GEDCOM, and therefore these two fields correspond exactly to the way that various genealogy programs are forced to exchange sources and citations with each other. Don’t get all hung up on the names Footnote and Page Number. Instead, think of them simply as the Left Part and the Right Part.
I think the whole Left Part and Right Part thing that GEDCOM uses can be confusing. Sometimes I wish there was just One Part. And indeed, with my source templates I am a source splitter and I only use the Left Part. So my Left Part becomes just One Part.
RM’s own Obituary template is a prime example of how the Left Part and Right Part thing can be confusing. That’s because its ItemID field is a Right Part field but the [ItemID] variable is at the left end of the sentence. That means that any sources and citations based on RM’s Obituary template will become mangled if they are transferred to other genealogy software. That’s a good reason to consider RM’s newspaper templates for obituaries, even though I don’t like treating obituaries as newspaper articles.
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well you can customize your own source/ citation to you liking.
You can start with a template / copy it and tweak or build totally from scratch.
Some people like free form better depending.
Kevin
That’s true to a degree. RM’s Footnote variable goes completely to GEDCOM’s TITL tag but GEDCOM has additional tags for the source that are supported by other programs: AUTHor and PUBLisher are two off the top of my head. So transfers between the two result in irreversible structural changes.
Thanks for your thoughts, everyone. I’ve taken a couple days away and will give it another go.
It looks like I need to get EE to understand the field names, then? I feel as though I could write a decent citation, but I’m just not getting the terminology that’s used. “Source Ref #” for example? “Detail Ref #”? Where do I put the date I accessed it and where if I viewed it online? If I could only sit with someone and go through the five most common types of records I’m using.
@thejerrybryan, I don’t know what Left Part and Right Part refer to. Can you explain?
I feel as though I am keeping track of source information well, but I am completely perplexed and frustrated by how to input it so that it contains all the needed information without spitting out a garbage citation. If I never print reports and am a hobbyist rather than a professional genealogist, might it just be better to store citations in Notes?
That would certainly help. But it also has the potential to overwhelm you. Evidence Explained is an intense book, diving very deep into the esoterica of citation concepts and creation. You can have a look at sample pages here, to see what I mean.
I have a copy of the 3rd revised edition, which was recently supplanted by the 4th ed. I’ve found it useful, but sometimes mind-boggling despite being used to reading technical documents and legal contracts.
Though intense, I will also say that it is an excellent guide. The first chapter alone, on the fundamentals of evidence analysis, will make you a better researcher and strengthen your tree.
There’s a very good chance your local library has a copy of EE. You could call them & confirm. If they have it, you could then spend a day browsing the book and looking in-depth at the record types you’re interested in. (And photocopying pages for easier reference later.)
So far, I’ve found the canned source templates to be somewhat deficient in that regard, so I create my own. Using EE and the canned templates as a start, I copy a template and add additional fields to capture the details I want. Jerry and a few others do the same kind of “roll your own” thing.
Citations are like bread crumbs, helping you (and others) track back to where you found your information. RM source templates try to automate some of the labor of creating citations by capturing your data into fields, then using the data in those fields to fill in flexible sentences. It’s a bit like the Mail Merge capability in modern word processing apps.
If you’d rather not deal with all of that, and you can capture what you personally need in Notes, then there’s nothing “wrong” with your approach. And you can always backtrack and start using the templates, though that will create more labor for you.
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Thanks, @KimberlyGreen. I have spent a little time with the book already and poke around from time to time on the EE website. I really do understand the point of having good citations and have kept really good notes over the decades I’ve been doing this. It’s just the field names with absolutely no indication of what it’s asking for are not at all useful. I get what RM is trying to do (i.e., take the fields and cook the info into a readable citation). I guess I just don’t find the field names at all intuitive. I feel like I need to stop researching and spend a week creating source templates!
Hey @Sbjorkman I’m so sorry. I inferred, from your other comments, that you didn’t have time with EE etc already. My apologies for the wrong inference.
What are some of the templates you’re wrestling with? Maybe we can all help you hash it out here on your post (and capture the knowledge for future users).
Those are not used in Citation sentences. They are available for your personal use, most commonly to coordinate between your physical filing system for sources or paper copies of sources should you have one. You can leave them blank.
Post up a sample. Explain the type of source and how you see the citation being presented on a report or screen. That could trigger suggestions/explanations from these folks who customize templating for a base template to use or modify or even an offering of an example custom creation.
Don’t forget that Elizabeth has a nice website where she answers questions and provides more information.
A link appeared above, but was just labeled as sample pages. There’s lots more that available.
John Doe, "The History of the Doe Family, page 12.
Left part: John Doe, "The History of the Doe Family
Right part: page 12.
U.S. Federal Census: 1880, Anderson County, Tennessee, Dist. 9, Enumeration District 141, page 100d, ancestry.com (1880 U.S. Census) viewed on 1 December 2013.
Left part: U.S. Federal Census: 1880, Anderson County, Tennessee
Right part: Dist. 9, Enumeration District 141, page 100d, ancestry.com (1880 U.S. Census) viewed on 1 December 2013.
Different authorities and different RM users will differ in where they might break a citation into its left part and its right part, but there will still be a left part and a left part unless you make everything the left part.
The distinction between the parts is not a trifle to ignore. GEDCOM stores the left part and the right part in separate data fields. Let me give an example that is ill formed.
Death Certificate: Peters, Alva Edward; Certificate 27359; Edgemoore, Civil District 9, Anderson County, Tennessee, 1942; ancestry.com (Tennessee, Death Records, 1908-1958); viewed 29 September 2015.
From the point of view of GEDCOM, the left part should be Death Certificate: Anderson County, Tennessee, 1942 because there is a reel of microfilm at the Tennessee State Library and Archives that contains all the 1942 death certificates for Anderson County. All citations for death certificates from Anderson County in 1942 would share this part of the citation. And some authorities would go further than that and make all the years for Anderson County into a single left part, or they would go even further and make all Tennessee death certificates into a single left part with the county and the year in the right part.
The Peters, Alva Edward; Certificate 27359; Edgemoore, Civil District 9 text should be a right part because it’s specific to this particular citation. And as before, some authorities would move additional information out of the left part and into the left part.
I’m using the terms “left part” and “right part” to distinguish the left part and the right part of the sentence. But both RM and GEDCOM store the left part and the right part separately. In the case of RM, the left part is stored in a Master Source and the right part is stored in the Source Detail. But a problem arises when something in the right part of the sentence becomes stored in the Source Detail.
My ill formed citation for a death certificate works only because i store everything in the Master Source, even though I have some right part fields to the left of some left part fields. RM doesn’t use the terms left part and right part. I was just trying to describe what is going on. But RM certainly has a Master Source fields and Source Details fields that need to be understood.
You’ve all been so helpful.
@TomH This gets back to my original question: How did you know that? Somehow I’m not finding an explanation of the fields, although I’m sure it exists.
@thejerrybryan Thank you for the explanation of left and right sides. Your last sentence interests me. Other than coming to you helpful people, where can a user learn about this really important field information?
@kbens0n Thank you so much for this. I’m sure my citations aren’t totally right, but I’ll post a couple from research I did yesterday:
1930 U.S. Federal Census, Worcester County, Massachusetts, population schedule, Worcester, ward 2, block 272, ED 14-20, sheet 24A, p. 44 (stamped), dwelling 224, family 273, Eric J. Pearson [household]; database with images, Ancestry (ancestry.com : accessed 12 March 2025); citing National Archives and Records Administration microfilm publication T626.
Lur Parish (Göteborg och Bohus län, Sweden), Husförhörslängder [household examination records], SE/GLA/13343/A I/25 (1891-1896), Berndt Andersson [household], double page 249; digital image, Riksarkivet [National Archives of Sweden], (riksarkivet.se/bildvisning/00080353_00256 : accessed 12 March 2025), citing Riksarkivet i Göteborg [National Archives in Gothenburg].
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Going back to your original question. What would be helpful is to borrow from your library a copy of Mills’ Evidence Explained, first edition. The RM source templates are based on that first edition. I have the first, and the recently published fourth edition. The first (and possibly second and third) edition contains a few hundred “QuickCheck Models” (templates) for various source types (on the gray pages). Each template shows not only a properly constructed source citation, but also above each element (i.e. RM field) is a label of what that element is. A few examples being Author, Repository, Jurisdiction, and Item Type. In the book section on Artifacts, some of the Item Types in the templates are email, letter, bound transcripts. For your Newspapers.com example, Item Type might be obituary, or leave it blank if it’s obvious from the Article Title. EE fourth edition is done differently. Although much of the text is the same, those QuickCheck models are gone and are replaced with 14 more generic models. (Also, fourth edition renames some of those fields, so ItemType is now “Descriptor” in the book.) So, EE first edition will give you the field definitions you are looking for (although not a list per se). Looking at my own local library, I see a half dozen copies of first edition can be borrowed from area libraries.
I create my own source templates as others have discussed. For example, for Newspapers.com you might use RM’s “Newspaper, Online Images” template. But if you’re interest in having a Bibliography in addition to endnotes/footnotes, I believe you’d wind up with a Bibliography entry for every article. I don’t want that, so my template is based on having an endnote for every unique article, but a Bibliography entry just for each newspaper.
By the way, I constantly look at both of those editions. I should also add that the fourth edition has an expanded (and therefore more helpful) coverage of online sources (i.e. images).
Source Reference Number - This field is to hold any reference number you may want to assign to the source. It is completely optional.
It sounds as though you have yet to read the RM10 Help pages on Sources and Citations. That has to be your starting point.
I’m in RM8 and have read the help pages. I have access to Evidence Explained (although not the first edition). I understand the QuickCheck models and can get my way to the wizard.
I’ll take one of your samples and work thru it …
As mentioned by @JeffH the EE book has QuickCheck models for reference, and they’re explained in the related chapter. Below is a picture of part of the QC model for “Digital Images Federal Census (U.S.)” from my EE 3rd Ed Revised.
And here is a screen capture from RM v10 for the corresponding Source Template.
You access the Source Templates List here:
In the Template, in the Citation column, you’ll see a “Y” in some of them. Those without a Y appear in what RM calls the “Master Source” section. Those with a Y appear in the “Citation Detail” section.
Note … the Left/Right terminology that Jerry is referring to corresponds to these 2 sections.
Referring to both images, you can pretty easily see how the RM fields pick up the EE QuickCheck corresponding components.
And from there, you could pipe your 1930 US census details into both the EE QC model and also the RM Source format.
If you created a single Source record called US Census Records, then you would first fill out the Master Source section with things like the Year (or year range if you’re grouping them all together), Jurisdiction, etc. Then, when you are creating each citation, you’ll fill in the additional fields related to that particular instance. For example, you might create an entry for Eric J. Pearson and that name would go into the “Person” field of that specific citation and “citing National Archives and Records Administration microfilm publication T626.” would go into the Credit line field.
As mentioned before, I’m someone who “rolls my own”, using EE as an initial guide. I wanted to capture more detail, etc for the US census. Plus I break my US census sources out by year. So here’s what my custom template looks like. (Note, I don’t concern myself with GEDCOM portability. So if this template breaks something there it’s not a problem for me.). I designed my template to accomodate the census regardless of its changing page layout & details.
And here’s a practical example of how it looks, using my 5th ggf from the 1790 census.
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