A power of attorney citation

I have found a power of attorney document on FamilySearch. After reading at EE 10.7, I crafted the following citation, but I'm not sure if it needs adjustment:

Dane County, Wisconsin, Dane County (Wis.) deed indexes (1835-1915), deeds (1836-1886, and miscellaneous records (1854-1916), Miscl. Record O: 484-485, Mrs. Jane Culmer to A. Pickarts, power of attorney, 31 July 1866; digital images, "v. M(p. 358-end) - v. O 1864-1869," image 687. FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/search/catalog/116287 : accessed 31 Jul 2023).

I pulled the first part from the link in the FamilySearch catalog, but I can see it's redundant.

Submitted byEEon Tue, 08/01/2023 - 09:06

mbcross, have you seen the following sections of EE (3d ed. rev., pp. 498–501)?

DEEDS & CONVEYANCES

10.5  Basic Formats: Original Register

10.6  Basic Formats: Image Copies 

10.7  Deed Books, Miscellanea

10.6 has explicit examples for citing the deed books FamilySearch has imaged—both the microfilm itself and the online images made from the microfilm.  Regardless of what we find in a deed book, the citation to the deed book is the same.  All that is different is the descriptive word(s) we use in our Specific Item field of the citation.

There are two other things to keep in mind—covered in the Fundamentals of Citation chapter:

  • For microfilmed records, we take our citation information from the film itself, not from a library catalog. To quote from 2.27 (FHL Film of Unpublished Records): Be aware that the FHL catalog description frequently uses a generic label to describe the contents of an entire roll. The actual title of a specific register or file may not appear in the cataloging entry.” With courthouse records, all the information you need to cite the record book or file will be on either (a) the filmed cover (or spine) of the book or (b) on the target that the filmer created at the start of the film.
  • In a reference note, all citation details for one source are in one sentence.  No periods separate the details that identify any single source.  If you put a period in the middle of details describing one source, you’re telling readers (and yourself at a later date) that you’ve used two or more separate sources.

 

If you’d like to post a revision, please do.

Is this better?

Dane County, Wisconsin, Deed Records Miscl. Record O: 484-485, Mrs. Jane Culmer to A. Pickarts, power of attorney, 31 July 1866; digital images, "v. M(p. 358-end) - v. O 1864-1869," image 687. FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/search/catalog/116287 : accessed 31 Jul 2023).

Submitted byEEon Tue, 08/01/2023 - 20:44

Progress, mbcross! You almost nailed that first layer. When I look at the cover to the book, what I see is this image:

 

 

This tells us that the name of the book is "Misc. Record O."  The other details you have for the name of the book is from FSL's cataloging data. Cataloging data is not part of the citation.  When we substitute this actual book title for what's currently there in your citation, we get this:

Dane County, Wisconsin, Miscellaneous Record O: 484–85, Mrs. Jane Culmer to A. Pickarts, power of attorney, 31 July 1866;

Now let's work on the second layer ...

Remember that the basic pattern for citing a book or website is this:

Author/Creator, Title of Book or Website (Publication Place or URL : date), specific page or image number

If a book has chapters by different authors or a website has different databases, then the chapter or database details are stuck in front of the base pattern, giving us this:

Author or Chapter or Database, “Title of Chapter or Database,” Editor of Book or Creator of Website, Title of Book or Website (Publication Place/URL : date), specific page or image number.

In this case, you are citing a microfilm at a website called FamilySearch. That microfilm is not part of any named database. So we have nothing to add in front of the website's identity.  We're left with just this to cite:

Author/Creator, Title of Website (URL : date), specific page or image number

We can also eliminate the Author/Creator field because the website’s title is self-named. That leave us with this:

FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/search/catalog/116287 : accessed 31 Jul 2023), image 687.

Here, we have a serious issue: The URL that you give is the URL for the catalog page. You’re not citing the catalog. You’re citing the image, so you need a URL for the image or for the first page of the film. At the URL for the catalog page, we have no way to get to "image 687" with a lot of twists and turns with various film options.

When I found the page you cited, this is what I see:

This gives us all the details we need to cite Layer 2:

FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-C3QC-V3RL-P : accessed 1 August 2023), image 687 of film 008548269.

Putting both layers together, we have this:

Dane County, Wisconsin, Miscellaneous Record O: 484–85, Mrs. Jane Culmer to A. Pickarts, power of attorney, 31 July 1866; imaged, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-C3QC-V3RL-P : accessed 1 August 2023), image 687 of film 008548269.

 

Ahh, mbcross. Once upon a time a history researcher had to deal with just two basic things: (1) learn the different types of records that were created, and (2) learn the different ways in which they are archived. Now we have another to add to the mix: (3)  all the different ways that media delivers these materials.  It's no wonder we feel like we're twisting a Rubik's Cube every time we try to cite documents, trying to get everything to line up correctly.

On the bright side, now that you've worked through the issues in using FamilySearch—particularly the differences between its catalog data and its actual images—just think how many millions of records from that site you can now cite, using the same pattern we've discussed.

Beyond that, is your edition of EE one of the more recent ones (2015 to present) that has a QuickStart Guide tucked into the front? There, you'll find two pages, just two pages, with basic patterns for (a) books & websites; and (b) manuscripts in archives & websites that deliver them. If we learn that handful of patterns, seeing how each builds on the first, we should be able to adapt them to handle most everything we find.