Online databases - citing when there doesn't seem to be enough info

ADesc, you’re off to a good start. As for any “improper” past you might have, where you've been is where most history researchers come from!

“Citing when there doesn’t seem to be enough info” is a common problem, as you may have gathered from QuickLesson 4. Many online databases also lack titles—especially at websites where one centralized search-box covers many different records. We are all grateful that the West Virginia State Archives and the Genealogical Society of Utah have launched this digitization project and are making the images available on line. But, until citations are added there, we’re left to "make do" as best we can.

The basic principle for citing untitled things is this: We create a descriptive identifier that we use in place of a title, but we do not put quotation marks around our words because we are not quoting anything. (EE 2.22, p. 53 elaborates somewhat on this. The first part of EE 2.22 is reproduced under this website’s “Sample Text Pages” tab, but the last part is not. )

Scanning the website you used, we see another solution to your dilemma—one based on the following observations: 

• The website title would be West Virginia Division of Culture and History. That is also the name of the “creator/owner” of the site—a common situation with many government agency websites. When this occurs, there is no need to redundantly use that ID in both fields; the creator field can be left blank.
• The phrase you’ve also used in the position for the website title (“West Virginia Vital Research Records”) does not seem to appear as a title on any page at the site. That particular phrase does appear several times in a Google search that leads back to your cited page. As a “phrase” it can also be found via the site’s own search engine, but each time it leads to a differently titled page.
• The URL you give leads to a page that reads “Vital Research Records Search Selection.” That page states that the Vital Research Records Project is placing birth, marriage, and death “certificates” online, and it invites us to choose one of those categories. Each choice we make leads to a differently title page that offers search boxes.  (And, as you wisely note, much of what is being posted is a register or a bond, rather than a "certificate.")

All things considered, the clearest approach for those who use your citation—or for you when you come back to your citation after you have mentally gone cold about the site itself—would seem to be this:

Database title: Use the exact page title to which your URL leads: “Vital Research Records Search Selection.”

Website title: West Virginia Division of Culture and History.

Image data: The details you give about the specific document are headed in the right direction. Given that the image you are looking at carries a register title at the top of the page, it would be best to cite that exactly, in quotation marks, followed by the page numbers that are also visible on the image.

“Source of the source”:  As you note, this does not actually appear in the database, so we would not say that the website or database was “citing …..” anything.

Two other bits of finessing would make your citation clearer to users.

• The exact title of a website, like the exact title of other published, standalone works (books, journals, etc.), should be italicized.
• A space should come after the URL and before the colon. Otherwise, your colon will be picked up by others as part of the URL and it will make the URL unworkable.

Recognizing that “Citation is an art, not a science” (EE 2.1), our own rendition of your citation would be this:

"Vital Research Records Search Selection," database and images, West Virginia Division of Culture and History (http://www.wvculture.org/vrr/ : accessed 18 April 2012), database entry for John S. Spitsnogle and Catharine Perrell, 21 July 1842, and register image for “Marriage Records—Berkeley County, Virginia,” pp. 342–43. 

ADesc, you raise an interesting issue. Can you point us to one of the actual documents that carry a number of this type?

As a rule, if a document carries a number (as, say, certificates often do), then we would usually cite "Document No. 4130812_00006." If, from probing more deeply elsewhere, we knew how to interpret that number to make something more meaningful out of it, then adding that explanation to the citation in our own words would make the citation more helpful. But, as a rule, we would not say that the provider of the document was "citing LDS microfilm roll 4130812, image 00006" unless the provider actually provided a citation that carried that fuller explanation.

ADesc, the records at these two links do present an interesting use of those numbers. As used (and as we expected) the numbers are not self-explanatory. Each appears to be used by the site as its own "image number" and, at numerous other sites in the rapidly changing world of the Internet, those image numbers have also undergone changes. (EE 6.8)  The citation format given in our response of 4/19 remains the one we would recommend under present circumstances.

Lisa, you’ve definitely found a good example to show how modern technology—which is supposed to facilitate modern research—creates its own problems.

Let's first walk through a process you've probably already done; but we'll do it here for the benefit of readers:

1. Using the URL at the WV Archvies site (http://www.wvculture.org/vrr/va_view.aspx?Id=11210002&Type=Marriage), let's take off the last extension, leaving us with this: http://www.wvculture.org/vrr/

2. This puts us at a web page called "Vital Research Records Search Selection," which is said to be part of the “Vital Research Records Project.” It offers us 3 options: Birth, Death, and Marriage.

3. Clicking on "Marriage" sends us to a page headed "Search Marriage Records." There, we can input the name of the bride and groom and click "Search."

4. That leads us to a page with 1 result for "William G. S. Powell & Leah Rogers, 1857, Taylor County, 1029 kb."

• Clicking William's name, gives us a data page that tells us nothing more about the marriage than what the prior page gave us.
• Clicking the option "View the record image," we get the image on which there is a small page number "21." 

But, nowhere yet, have I seen any identification of the register in which that page appears.  And, as you say, the site doesn't tell us that the images are made from microfilm.

There are at least three ways this might be handled: 1) feature the marriage record; 2) feature WVAH’s database with images; or 3) feature the FamilySearch database that led us there.

To feature the marriage record itself, we might approach it with a layered citation like this:

Marriage of William G. S. Powell to Leah Rogers, 1857, Taylor County, WV, unidentified register, page 21; imaged at “Vital Research Records [Project] Search Selection,” database with images, West Virginia Archives & History (www.wvculture.org/vrr/va_view.aspx?ID=11210002&Type=Marriage), citing no source; indexed without book or page at "West Virginia Marriages, 1780-1970," database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:FYWC-32G : accessed 20 March 2016), citing Family History Library microfilm 818,669.

Whew!

Brian, thanks for adding a response to Messages 3 and 5 above.  You make a good and helpful point and underscore why our own responses at Messages 4 and 6 pointed out: "As a rule, we would not say that the provider of the document was 'citing LDS microfilm roll 4130812, image 00006' unless the provider actually provided a citation that carried that fuller explanation." Had we done so in the case above, then we would have mischaracterized what 4130812 represents. It's a good reminder to all.

And your final comment is spot on!