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The suggested reference note in EE 11.55 for an online database of the Social Security Death Index gives me pause. It is:
Social Security Administration, "United States Social Security Death In-dex," database, FamilySearch.org (https://familysearch.org : accessed 1 April 2015), entry for Theresa Sammarco, 1978, SS no. 116-05-4655.
As the Social Security Administration is not the author or creator of this particular online database, I don't see why the reference note has the Social Security Administration at its beginning. To be consistent with the QuickStart Guide and the examples in EE, it seems that the reference note should be a layered citation, giving the source at the end. That is how FamilySearch.org has proposed a citation:
"United States Social Security Death Index." database. FamilySearch. Http://FamilySearch.org : accessed $(utility.accessYear). Citing U.S. Social Security Administration, Death Master File, database (Alexandria, Virginia: National Technical Information Service, ongoing).
Apparently, the exception is based on convention. I read in EE 11.55 that "[v]arious websites also offer a derivative of the master file that is commonly known as the 'Social Security Death Index' (SSDI). While these unofficial databases are conventionally attributed to the SSA..."
My thoughts are that consistency is a good thing and that "eveybody does it that way" is not, by itself, a good reason for deviating from the norm. Insofar as many people don't have EE and thus would not learn about the "convention", and insofar as indicating that the Social Security Administration is the author/creator of the database is confusing, if not misleading, my preference is to instead have a reference note such as:
"United States Social Security Death Index," database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/search/collection/1202535 : accessed 1 April 2015), entry for Theresa Sammarco, 1978, SS no. 116-05-4655; citing "U.S. Social Security Administration, Death Master File, database (Alexandria, Virginia: National Technical Information Service, ongoing)."
Note that I have used FamilySearch rather than the FamilySearch.org that was used in your reference note as it is FamilySearch that repeatedly appears throughout the website, including the reference note for its SSDI database.
Newonash,
Newonash,
You've flagged another example of our oft-quoted point: citation is an art, not a science. Each and every citation we create calls for weighing all known factors and making a human judgment as to how to best depict the situation.
In this case, we have a database that represents at least two significant processes:
Against this backdrop, let’s consider another pair of processes:
Question: Who is the creator of the book that you just published? Did you become the creator simply because you did the labor of imaging the book and having it printed? Did you become the creator of the new entity because you chose to omit the appendices? No.
By extension, we can then ask: Who is the creator of the data that FamilySearch presents in that database? Did FamilySearch create the data or did the Social Security Administration create the data? Does the fact that FamilySearch chose to omit certain information and created a new delivery system make FamilySearch the creator of the information in that database?
The reality here is that there is no perfect answer. There’s no tidy and tight way to explain, in a citation to this source, each participant’s role in the creation of the data. In this case, considering the limited role that FamilySearch played in the creation of that data, EE identifies the original creator and credits FamilySearch as the web provider. At the same time, no one would fault you if you used your preferred citation.
As for the web title FamilySearch vs. FamilySearch.org: Yes, you are correct. “.org” should not be in the title at 11.55. It is an artifact carried over from EE’s 2007 edition and the earliest incarnation of the website. It should have been excised in this edition. (As you will have noted, all other EE references to the website carries .org only in the URL.) This 11.55 usage is now flagged for correction in the next printing. Thanks for catching.
Incidentally, throughout EE3, the website now known as Ancestry is still consistently cited as Ancestry.com. The holding company dropped.com from its website title while EE3 was at press. That, too, will be changed throughout in the next printing.
Let me ask some questions,
Let me ask some questions, seeking answers that will help me decide which of the reference note possibilities to go with.
I certainly understand your example above about imaging a book that John Doe wrote in 1820. The image of the book is essentially the same thing as the book.
But I was thinking/assuming something totally different for the SSDI. I was thinking/assuming that FamilySearch had retyped the data from the SSDI date, making its own database. In that case, we would have something new, with all the errors that flow from recreation. That was why I felt that the Social Security Administration was not the creator of what is found on FamilySearch.
In what format was the SSDI data given to FamilySearch (and how do we know that?)? What did FamilySearch do to make that data available to the users of its website (and how do we know that)? Is FamilySearch only providing a search service to access the original SSDI data that now lies on a server somewhere or is FamilySearch providing a search service to access its version/recopying of the original SSDI data?
A related question (or perhaps a restatement of the question) is whether there is something unique about the SSDI? For any other database on FamilySearch or Ancestry.com that has dates and/or places of birth, marriage, and/or death, etc., would it also be appropriate or okay to cite as author/creator the city, state, etc. that has the original books and records and that provided the information by way of a database that it created to the website?
Dennis,
Dennis,
You raise good questions about the extent of FamilySearch's involvement. Perhaps Robert Raymond will weigh in here. However, the likelihood that FamilySearch rekeyed all the data on those tens of millions of people would seem improbable.
In the meanwhile, with regard to your last question:
Something has been nagging me
Something has been nagging me since your last reply, EE, and I have finally figured it out.
1. If, as you surmise, FamilySearch has done nothing (except eliminating certain pieces of the information) with the data other than making it available, i.e., the data is independent of FamilySearch's database, i.e., the data is not "a derivative work," isn't this a classic situation for a layered citation, at least something like this (by putting in a semi-colon):
Social Security Administration, "United States Social Security Death Index;" database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org : accessed 1 April 2015), entry for Theresa Sammarco, 1978, SS no. 116-05-4655.
This seems in line with your QuickLesson 19: providing a layer to cite the original item and providing a second layer to cite the online provider that is making the information available. It also seems consistent with your analogizing in your first reply the Social Security Death Index to an image of a book written by John Doe in 1920. A reference note for an imaged page from that book would be a layered citation, such as in EE 9.6.
2. If this is a proper way of preparing a reference note, what can we properly put in the first layer? If a hypothetical beginning genealogist who has never heard of the Social Security Administration and/or the Death Index looks at FamilySearch's website, all that she would know would be what FamilySearch is citing as its source. Shouldn't identification of a source be part of the citing layer of our own reference note rather than used as the identification of the original item in the first layer of our own reference note?
To some extent, this harkens back to my "Questions on draft registration cards" query where you said that, at least for an image, "Layer 1 cites only what is visible or what you can identify by paging backward or forward in the record set, as you would do in using the original." Because we are not talking about an image, does that change everything? Can we go outside the source given by FamilySearch? For example, can I use the information found in Evidence Explained that the Social Security Administration makes available the Death Index on DVDs?
And, again, I am left with the question of whether any such information-found-on-my-own can properly be put into layer 1 or can only go into layer 3? If it can only go in layer 3, then haven't we destroyed the layered citation because there is nothing to put in layer 1?
Now that I've seen my post on
Now that I've seen my post on the website, I see that I put the semi-colon in the wrong place since "United States Social Security Death Index" is the name of FamilySearch's own database. So the reference note at the beginning of my above post should have been something like:
Social Security Administration, Master Death File; "United States Social Security Death Index," database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org : accessed 1 April 2015), entry for Theresa Sammarco, 1978, SS no. 116-05-4655.
Hmhh. Interesting questions,
Hmhh. Interesting questions, Dennis—the part I managed to figure out.
1.
If our goal here is a layered citation, EE would be inclined to say that the first layer (the part before the semicolon) is incomplete as structured. In a layered citation, the layer for the original record and the layer for the derivative can both be standalone citations; but the portion before the semicolon is not complete in and of itself.
Replacing the semicolon with a comma (as per our online example at 11.55) keeps it all in one layer, with every needed element cited in that layer.
2.
This is where you lost me: "Shouldn't identification of a source be part of the citing layer of our own reference note rather than used as the identification of the original item in the first layer of our own reference note?" Can you explain it differently or give us an example?
The second part of this query asks (if I understand you correctly):
In cases where a SS database does not give full information on the source, "Can I use the information found in EE that the Social Security Administration makes available the Death Index on DVDs."
The answer to this would be: With considerable risk. For many sources that historical researchers use, there are multiple versions. This is one of those cases. In fact, one purpose of EE 11.55 is to demonstrate the variety of versions of the Social Security Death Index and modifications we have to make for each. Using information that applies to one version, a version we haven't actually used, to create a citation for a different version that we did use is likely to create problems. (A simple corollary here would be citing a page from one edition of a book when we actually used a different edition.)
1. My goal wasn't to have a
1. My goal wasn't to have a layered citation. What I was trying to ask was this: when we have information that the website provider doesn't create itself, doesn't that naturally lead to a layered citation -- layer 1 speaking to the independent information and layer 2 speaking to the website provider? (Or to put it another way, isn't that what you were suggesting in your discussion about layered citations?) This is before we even get to the point of deciding whether we have enough information to have, as you put it, a "standalone citation" in each layer.
2. I was also trying to ask whether a lack of information about the independent information might cause us to abandon the layered citation due to the inability to make layer 1 a standalone citation. It seems to me that you may have answered "yes" to that above.
For example, let's say a database provided an image of a page of a book but that's all we know -- there is no title or other information in the image to tell us anything about the book, and the database gives no source. It would be difficult or impossible to come up with a layered citation similar to what is found at EE 9.6.
3. I was also attempting to ask what information outside the image and/or outside the database could be properly used to come up with a citation or to decide how to structure the reference note. So, for my example above, if I did a Google search for some of the words in the imaged page and learned what book the imaged page was from, can I use that information to create a layered citation, particularly, to put the normal book information in layer 1 of the reference note?
It wasn't my intent to get into different versions of the SSDI. When I referred to DVDs provided by the SSA, (1) I was just using that as an example of information not found at the website, as part of my question if we are restricted to that website's information in coming up with a reference note, and (2) I was thinking that your knowing that information was helpful in leading you to conclude that FamilySearch probably didn't "rekey all the data." In the absence of the information about DVDs, I think it reasonable to conclude that FamilySearch might have rekeyed the data, leading us back to my original question at the beginning of this post of why the Social Security Administration was being crediterd when I was assuming that the database was a product of FamilySearch's own efforts.
Hopefully, I have explained myself at least a little better this time around.
As Palmer's old proverb put
As Palmer's old proverb put it: If at first you don't succeed: try, try again:
1.
Yes and maybe. If we want to add, to a citation, information that isn't shown in that source or cited by the provider, then we would have at least two approaches: (a) we could add another layer to the citation. Or (b) we could end that citation with a period, start a new sentence, and then write whatever we want to say—for as many words, sentences, or paragraphs as we might want to add.
2.
If a database provided an image of a page or a book but no other information, then there would be only one layer to the citation. If we wanted to emphasize the image, we'd cite that image and proceed to cite the website or book in which we found it. Or, more commonly, we'd cite the website or the book, and then cite the specific item/image that we used at that website or from that book.
3.
If we add to a citation information that we discovered elsewhere via a Google search (or elsewhere in EE), then we're back to Point 1 above. We could add it in a separate layer in the citation, making it clear that we got it from another source. Or, usually a better approach, we would simply close out the citation, start a new sentence, and say what Google's Source (or EE) had to say.
3, para. 2:
Dennis, I'm still having difficulty entertaining the idea that FamilySearch would have rekeyed all the data in the SSDI which, at this point, is approaching 100,000,000 records.
I guess I'll jump in with
I guess I'll jump in with some questions of my own. :-)
Online listings of the SSDI give both the date of birth and the date of death (or at least month and year), location of last residence and state the SSN was issued. The SSN itself may not be provided.
Are the SSN and year of death included in the citation in order to differentiate the person cited from others with the same name?
Would there be any disadvantage to capturing both the birth and death dates and state of issue to differentiate people who had the same dates of birth and death but no SSN provided online? For example:
Social Security Administration, "United States Social Security Death Index," database, FamilySearch (http://familysearch.org : accessed 26 September 2015), entry for William C. Smith (1918-1992), SS number issued in Illinois.
Or just ignore the whole thing and cite a different source that has the needed information? :-)
Social Security Administration, "United States Social Security Death Index," database, Ancestry (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 26 September 2015), entry for William C. Smith, 1992, SS no. 361-09-0972.
Brian
Along the line of what Brian
Along the line of what Brian G. is saying, my preference for the SSDI citations is to include the complete date of death rather than just the year.
Brian and Dennis,
Brian and Dennis,
No one would fault you for either decision. In our view, this is a classic case of, "It's your citation and your research; so you can add as much to it as you want to add."