Thank you so much. The table with the explanation of fields is just what I need. How did you access it? When I go to Census U.S. Federal (Online images), I do not see that at all. Is that because I’m in RM8?
Yay! We’re making progress on your understanding 
I don’t have RM8 so my guidance might be a little off. But you want to go to the Sources section of RM. From there, there should be a 3-dot menu or something similar that lets you access the “Source Template List”. When you get there, you can look at each template and see it’s underlying definition.
I very much appreciate all the others who have pitched in and provided great examples, much better than I could have done.
I own copies of both the first edition and fourth edition of EE. However, I can’t find my copy of the first edition at the present time. If I can’t find it, I’m probably going to have to break down and go the library from time to time to look at the first edition because it is still an important resource. I think RM has a long term problem of having source templates that are very inflexibly hardwired into a book that is gradually becoming obsolete. The problem doesn’t need to be addressed right away, but it’s probably going to need to be addressed eventually.
As far as learning how all this works, I don’t think there is really one place anywhere that puts all the pieces together. For example, I don’t think there is anything anywhere in either the first or fourth edition of EE that talks explicitly about dividing a citation sentence into two parts, even though that’s the way most genealogy software works because of the way sources and citations work in GEDCOM. The only clue in EE about the two parts is to study how full citation sentences are supposed to look vs. how bibliography sentences are supposed to look. A bibliography sentence in EE is more or less the “left part”. That leaves everything that is in the citation sentence and not in the bibliography sentence as being the “right part”.
I don’t think you can just study the GEDCOM standard and figure it out. I think you also have to open GEDCOM files produced by various genealogy software using a text editor and see for yourself what sources and citations look like in a GEDCOM file.
In any case, I don’t think I ever would have come up with decent sources and citations if I hadn’t defined my own source templates. I didn’t do it all at once. I did it for one record type at a time over a period of a couple of years - like census records first, then birth records, then death records, then marriage records, then obituaries, etc
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Agreed. But that happens any time software tries to automate a living reference guide. I suspect the RM staff spent considerable time getting the templates created the first time. Now they probably don’t have the resources to keep it maintained at the pace that Ms. Mills updates her guide.
In the end, @Sbjorkman 's approach to just manually putting them in notes might be more future-proof 
.
I doubt Ms. Mills approached writing EE with genealogy software and GEDCOM compatibility as her primary concern. She was probably writing it agnostically so that it applied whether using software or banging your research out on sheets of paper on an antique typewriter.
And let’s be honest … GEDCOM is pretty freakin long-in-the-tooth. It’s not exactly the best database ETL in the modern world.
Any number of programs importing a RootsMagic GEDCOM seem to be able to successfully incorporate the source/citation information conveyed. Differences in how that information is represented in GEDCOM tags/hierarchy is subjective amongst exchange participants.
As a sidenote, I cannot exactly recall the details, but I seem to remember this source templating being the product of a user who did the initial hard work of collecting and formulating the early premise and then proposed the idea to Bruce for potential implementation. I could certainly be mis-remembering because I’m an ancient user from as far back as before the acclaimed helpful forum user, Alfred Ellers, passed on.
Again, thank you all for your help.
@KimberlyGreen, I found the table of fields – thanks!
I think it’s a shame that there isn’t a go-to spot that explains all of this. I would imagine your average home user of RM is likely to forgo sourcing their trees using Sources in RM because there’s just so little documentation on how to do it.
I’ve now spent some time (again!) playing with creating a source, and while it’s better, I’m still not seeing what I would call a normal looking source citation (e.g., using the church records (online images) template seems not to include a field for where the original documents are held – the “citing so-so-so archive in xyz location”). I’m not understanding some of the fields still (e.g., for “Record Book ID” the hint is “generic descriptive label,” which sounds like an oxymoron to me – what can that possibly mean?).
For now, EE is at the library and can’t be checked out, so if the answer is there, I have to work a bit here, go back to the library & get the key to the local history room, etc. I’ll have to wait for my own copy to arrive.
@thejerrybryan I’m impressed that you’ve gone and looked at the GEDCOM code. I’m not sure I’m THAT invested in figuring this out! I really like your idea of not doing it all at once. I’ll follow your suggestion and start with one record type. For me, it’s those Swedish church records. I have a million citations to them that need to be fixed. I just have to figure out the last details…
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And thus began the journey of our heroine to becoming a roll-you-own source template maker.
You could copy the existing template and add fields to capture the details you want. If all of your records are held at the same archive you could probably put that detail in the Master Source header section. If the locations are going to vary, put it in the Citation section. Then, you can learn how to modify the template sentences to add in your field information. Read up on sentences here.
I’m glad you found the source fields and it helped you a little.
@Sbjorkman Hey, by the way … not to shill for RootsMagic, but they do have a RootsTech software discount until tomorrow (Friday 14 March). If you wanted to upgrade in order to get the latest template revisions, software enhancements, etc, then now would be a good time to do it for $20.
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Just a guess but maybe the Dewey Decimal System number?
@KimberlyGreen Thanks for the heads up on upgrading to RM10. Done!
I also got my own copy of EE, so I can do more thorough looking at it than I’d done before.
I’m playing around (still) with making my own sources. I’d hope to make each volume of this Swedish church register a source and then have lots of citations from that one volume. It seems like I might not be able to do that though, because the page number and date accessed is part of the source and not the citation. Is that right? I’m going to end up with a million sources!
That totally depends on the template. The template can be set up either way.
Excellent news on the RM upgrade and getting a copy of EE 
I think you’ll get lots of value for the money you spent.
I agree with @thejerrybryan on the template setup.
I don’t know all the details of the records you’re looking at. But, at first blush, I might consider setting up the Master Source as the Swedish church itself. Then in the Citation Detail you could set up fields to capture the specific volume, page, data accessed etc. Doing it that way would result in only one source, and however many citations you have.
Since you’re getting a copy of EE, it might be worthwhile to wait a little on setting up the template. Do a thorough read-thru of the chapter on Church records. Then take some time to look at the corresponding RM templates. You may discover that there’s already a template that meets your needs or can be copied & tweeked.
I agree with one possible exception. The possible exception is that the specific volume might be a source. That way, you would have as many sources as volumes you reference. Because of your familiarity with the Swedish church records, you are surely better positioned to make a decision about whether the Swedish church as a whole is the source or whether each volume is a source.
One thing to think about in that regard is how you might like a bibliography or list of sources to appear if ever you wanted to produce such a list. Would you wish for “Swedish Church Records” to appear just once in your list, or would you wish for each volume to appear separately in such a list?
I’m presently a source splitter, which makes it impossible to produce a bibliography or list of sources, or at least it makes it impossible while using RM. But I consider regularly if maybe I would like to become much more of a lumper. But if I were to become a lumper, then I would have to make hard decisions about how far to break down sources before they become details. For example, is the U.S. Federal Census all one big source? Or is the 1790 U.S.Federal Census its own source, the 1800 U.S. Federal Census its own source. etc.? And I don’t know the best answers. My question for the U.S. Census is exactly the same question you have for the Swedish church records.
Yeah, she kinda touched on that. But we didn’t answer her yet in a meaningful way.
Depending on how you set up the template, you wouldn’t have a million sources. You’d set the volume up as the source, with some general details as part of the Master Source. The Citation Details section of the template would include page number, date accessed etc.
So, in the end, you’d create your source template. You’d use that template to create a new source such as “Swedish Church Vital Records - Volume 23”. Then, on a given fact for a person, you would create a new citation that points to that source. On that specific citation you would fill in the details of the Citation Details.
The result is that you would have a series of Sources, one for each volume. Depending on how many volumes you were looking at it could be 2, 3, a dozen, etc but probably a fairly small list. Under each volume you would have lists of citations, the number of which would depend on how you name your citations. If you gave the citation a fairly general name, such as “Swedish Church - Bubba Jones - birth” then you could use that citation against all relevant facts (birth date, parent name, birth location, etc)
To give you a sense of how I name my US Census citations …
- Blue arrow … Source name, created using my previously shared custom Source Template. Named in a structured way, so that all Census sources sort together in the source list, first by type, then year, then jurisdiction. That gives me a chronological sort of US, state and city census
- Green arrow … Citation name. Similarly named in a structured way. (Elias is a 3x ggf.)
- Red arrow … facts that the Citation is linked to.
So, substituting your Swedish records
- Blue arrow … might be a source named “Swedish Church Vital Records - Volume 23”
- Green arrow … might be “Swedish Church - Bubba Jones - birth”
- Red arrow … might include a link to the birth date fact
I treat each Census year as a separate source. In fact I treat each schedule as a separate source. In that way, each year’s schedule is treated somewhat like a book you might take off a shelf and flip through the pages of. Just as books have ISBN numbers that uniquely identify them, Census schedules each have unique NARA Catalog Series NAIDs. I figure if NARA treats them as discrete units, I should too. Continuing the library analogy, the shelf itself is the collection of Census “books” (synonymous with NARA Record Group 29 ‘Records of the Census’ (NAID 358))
A nice little side benefit of creating per-Census sources is that I get to see the quantity and distribution of my citations across time:
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This is exactly what I’m envisioning. The church did a household visit every year and catalogued everyone living there; these are in volumes that cover roughly five years. So from the same parish in one volume, I might have 20 citations (to cover various parts of the family living on different farms). Functionally it serves as an annual census.
I’m getting closer to having this one volume set up. If I set it up so the URL for the first page of the volume is at the source level, then cite the actual page number in the individual citations, is that sufficient? Trying to figure out how otherwise to get someone to the page using the fields in RM.
In terms of terminology, is this right?
EE’s “First Reference Note” is RM’s “Footnote”
EE’s “Subsequent Note” is RM’s “Short Footnote”
EE’s “Source List Entry” is RM’s “Bibliography”
Yes.
(and here is some extra text to get my answer up to the forum’s minimum requirement of a 20 character response.)
Just my opinion but instead of using the 1st page of the volume, why not use year range and page range-- such as
St Francis de Salle-
Baptisms
Book C
1785-1820
pages 1-445
and when you have a minute, you MIGHT want to check out these User Source Templates as you might find one that works-- you do have to download them to view them
I don’t believe I need the page range, as each citation has a unique page identifier. The URL is really my only question at this point, and I suppose it’s more of a proper citation question than a RM question. In EE (4th edition) on p. 330, the citation shows the physical path to get to the volume, but it’s on a paid site that I don’t have access to so I can’t test it. For the site I’m using, if I use as the URL the first page of the volume (here: sok.riksarkivet.se/bildvisning/00080353) then give the page number in the citation, that should enable someone to find the page without knowing Swedish and without having to follow a specific path.
@Sbjorkman I recommend leaving page-specific URLs out of the Master Source section.
I went to the site link you provided and grabbed a partial screen cap. See my thoughts below it.
Under the Källhänvisning section, this information is what you want in your Master Source section … “Lurs kyrkoarkiv, Husförhörslängder, SE/GLA/13343/A I/25 (1891-1896)” (Lur church archives, House interrogation records, SE/GLA/13343/A I/25 (1891-1896)). It’s referring to the entire collection volume regardless of page, so will carry through for every citation you create for that source.
The Länk section contains a URL to each specific page / image. This is the URL you want to capture into the Citation Detail section. Therefore you will want a field in your Source Template, as a Citation Detail item, to capture it.
Because here’s the thing … if someone later wants to visit that page then either
- The site exists, the first page URL of the collection exists and the URL of the specific page will still exist. So you might as well give that URL to make your citation precise and maximally efficient to use -or-
- the record set and all its images go away / change URLs, in which case giving someone the first image URL won’t help them anyway.
For example, this is the reason why, in my US Census template, “Repository1Loc” is sed to capture the exact URL to that person’s record rather than a general URL to the collection. If the repository (usually Ancestry) moves the entire collection, the URLs of everything are useless anyway. But as long as that URL is valid, I want to be able to go directly to it.
This is what I have left to figure out. How do I essentially take the URL from the master source and add detail to it within a citation? If I want my URL ultimately to look like “sok.riksarkivet.se/bildvisning/00080353_00264” where up to the underscore is in the master source (because it represents the volume) and the 00264 is the specific image page…how do I do that? Because I couldn’t figure out how to do that within RM, I was trying to work around it by giving the actual page number (which the source information also does by giving “sida 257” (page 257). Or does the whole URL not get entered until the citation stage…and, if so, how do I do that?
I’ve looked at a model on the EE website and (at Citing Riksarkivet | Evidence Explained) EE rates as “excellent” the following citation:
Arbrå Parish (Gälvsborgs län, Hälsingsland, Sweden), Födelse- och dopböcker [Birth and baptismal books], 1877 – 1885, double-page 92, Kristina [Nordlund], born 22 October 1881; digital images, Riksarkivet [Swedish National Archives], (Arbrå kyrkoarkiv, Födelse- och dopböcker, SE/HLA/1010005/C/5 (1877-1885) - Riksarkivet - Sök i arkiven : downloaded 22 July 2022), C-5:97, citing originals at Landsarkivet i Härnösand [Swedish National Archives, Härnösand].
This is along the lines of what I’m envisioning, but that 00097 is a specific page. Ideally, that’s what I want for a URL, but I can’t figure out how to do it.