Combining Citations for Vanity's sake

the1gofer,

The practice you are suggesting is actually the correct form. EE's chapter "Fundamentals of Citation" addresses this at 2.20: "Citing Several Sources for a Single Fact."  Using a string of multiple reference numbers in the text, for a single assertion, is not a recommended practice in any standard citation guide. 

Whether you combine all the sources into a single "sentence" within the note or whether you use multiple sentences within the note will depend upon the complexity of the material you cite. If all the sources are simple-to-handle publications, then longstanding practice is to put them all into one sentence with a semicolon separating the data for each book. On the other hand, a citation in which multiple sources are manuscript materials—as with censuses or their images—will usually put a "full stop" (a period) at the end of the data for each census and begin a new sentence for the next source. The issue is clarity, as well as esthetics.

Chapter 2, Fundamentals of Citation, explain many issues of this type that would help you going forward—including when we should not lump multiple sources into a single citation.

It is indeed long, Jason. As a starting point, EE would not use those long URLs for individual images at Family Search. Long URLs have a way of changing. They also create the potential for typos and reproduction errors that render them useless. A simple citation to FamilySearch's root URL would enable anyone to find the image if you have cited the census itself correctly. 

There's also much potential, in your draft, for using standard abbreviations, elimination of wordiness (example: "the 89th Subdivision; continual reference to "United States" when it's obvious, the use of "the" before business names and "Inc." afterwards, the elimination of the word "pages" before references to book pages), dropping line numbers for years in which they aren't needed, etc. The actual name of the FamilySearch website is a bit shorter than you show and, given that census images don't undergo alteration from one day to the next, it's not essential to cite the date of download unless there is a problem. Aside from the shortening, your users would appreciate the use of italics to identify the names of publications. The citations to books would be much clearer if you use standard reference format, rather than using bibliographic format that puts periods in the middle of details for a single source. (All of the above are standard practices discussed primarily in Chapter 2, Fundamentals of Citation.)  As shown below (with a few other random things marked in red), these steps reduce your draft about 20 percent.

1850 U.S. census, Ware Co., Ga., pop. sch., 89th Subdivision, p. 173 (written), dwell. 46, fam. 46, David and Sarah Hickox; digital image, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org), citing NA M432, roll 86. 1860 U.S. census, Pierce County, Ga., pop. sch., 9th Dist., dwell. 200, fam. 201, David Hickox; digital image, FamilySearch, citing NA M635, roll 803133*. 1870 U.S. cens,, Pierce Co., Ga., pop. sch., Subdiv.100, p. ____,  dwell. 255, fam. 255, David Hickox; digital image, FamilySearch, citing M593, roll 169. 1880 U.S. cens., _____ Co., Ga., pop. sch., Pierce, ED 590, p. 12, dwell. 103, fam. 105, David Hickox; digital image, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com); citing NA M432, FHL roll 1254161. Cemeteries & More: Genealogy Reference, Brantley County, Georgia (Nahunta, Ga.: Brantley County Historical and Preservation Soc., 2002), p. ___. Folks Huxford, Pioneers of Wiregrass Georgia: A Biographical Account of Some of the Early Settlers of That Portion of Wiregrass Georgia Embraced in the Original Counties of Irwin, Appling, Wayne, Camden, and Glynn, vol. 5 (Homerville, Ga.: Huxford, 1954), 202-3. Find A Grave (http://findagrave.com : accessed 23 Mar. 2013), memorial page # _____ , [name of person], contributed by ____.

(*This number can't be right. An NA census publication does not have nearly a million rolls.)

You're bottom line is right: it is still quite long. That raises some questions to think about:

• Is all of this necessary for one specific "fact" in the text? (For example: If you have several original sources that agree on one date, what's the rationale for citing a derivative source such as Huxford? If two derivative sources agree on the same cemetery data, what's the rationale for citing them both at publication time? (If one has a photo of the grave and the other doesn't, EE would use the better source.)
• Is your narrative's reference note actually covering too many "facts"?  
• Given that these censuses will cover many facts about a person, then you will be citing them many times in one individual's biography--in which case, you'd be using short citations, no?

At publication, EE would also seriously consider dropping the references to the digital format and web location at which you viewed censuses. We collect that data in our working notes, because many times there arise conflicts that require us to know which version we used in order to sort out discrepancies between them. But that level of detail is not usually used at publication time.  A good way to better understand what you strip away at publication time would be to make a habit of reading a good peer-reviewed journal such as the NGS Quarterly.

Bonnie, that's a good, thought-provoking question.

The  "author/creator/owner" field for citing web materials is intended to identify the individual or agency responsible for the intellectual content of the site. This is analogous to citing the editor of a book with chapters by different authors. That's a totally different entity from, say, identifying the publishing company that produced the book or the printing house to whom the publisher contracted the printing.

With that in mind, as we review the 'About' page at Find A Grave, we find:

"Who is behind Find A Grave? Well, first and foremost, you are. Thousands of contributors submit new listings, updates, corrections, photographs and virtual flowers every hour. The site simply wouldn't exist without the million+ contributors. When it comes to administrating, building and maintaining the site, Find A Grave is largely operated by its founder, Jim Tipton. In addition to Jim, there are a handful of folks who work behind the scenes, helping out with Find A Grave on a daily basis. ... [Bios follow for several diffent individuals doing specific operations.]"

Who, then, would we cite as the author/creator/owner—i.e., the person responsible for the intellectual content of the site? The legal owner is now Ancestry.com. Would we cite the "founder" whose current job description limits his role to the production aspects of the website? The various individuals who work for the company and are featured on the page in much the same manner that, say, Ancestry.com uses to identify its corporate executives? Or the people who volunteer the data that we access at the site—a vast group that constitutes the true creators of the intellectual content but are recognized as "contributors" in the specific data field of a citation, because each of them is responsible only for the specific data he or she contributed.

Considering all the issues involved in its present corporate structure and the fact that the name of the site is a globally recognized one, EE would recommend simply citing the website name. If we feel we must put something in the author/creator/owner field, then Ancestry.com is the current owner.