Citing England and Wales Register

Hello, Curtisk2.  As a self-described "beginner," you're definitely a quick learner. There are just a couple of issues that need to be addressed.

Full Reference Note:

Your second layer is this:

... digital image, The National Archives, Kew, London, England, Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com : downloaded 18 May 2020) ...

Problem 1: As constructed, you are saying that The National Archives at Kew is the creator of the Ancestry website.

Problem 2: For the URL, you point to Ancestry's home page. Where does one go from there to find the image?

RE PROBLEM 1:

Look back at p. 240 for the QuickCheck Model you referred to. You'll notice there that each element of the citation carries a label above it. The label at that point is "WEBSITE CREATOR," not REPOSITORY or DOCUMENT OWNER. 

The basic rule of layering is this: Elements that belong to one layer should not be attributed to a different layer that identifies a different entity.

In this case: The National Archives owns the original document. It does not own, or did not create, Ancestry.

The root of the problem here is that you're trying to create a citation using the canned fields of a template from your chosen data management software.  There you entered TNA data in the field that your software provides for "Owner/Creator" of a record, rather than creator of the website. (Your software issues are something you'll need to discuss in a forum for your particular software.)

RE PROBLEM 2:

The QuickCheck Model you are using is for a type of website different from what are citing. EE's example at p. 240 uses this second layer:

Genes Reunited Records, 1901 Census Online (http:www.1901censusonline.com/ : accessed 1 April 2015) ...

That site was constructed as just one database, the 1901 census, with a search box on its homepage. You have used Ancestry, a site that offers tens of thousands of databases. At the Genes Reunited site, the URL for the home page was all that was needed. At Ancestry, you must identify the database. You may also choose to cite the exact URL for the exact image. 

Look back at the QuickStart Guide on the gray pages tipped into the front of EE. The first page labelled "The Basics" covers the basic pattern for publications, whether they are in print or online, as well as the basic concepts for structuring the citation. Note the pattern for "Website with Multiple Offerings" as well as the discussion surrounding it. 

(As an aside for other readers: Genes Reunited has since been replaced by Find My Past. FMP, like Ancestry, is a site with many databases. If we use the 1901 census there, then that layer of the citation would follow the basic pattern for "Website with Multiple Offerings.")

Incidentally, this situation (different websites structured in different ways and presenting the same material in different ways) is why EE uses a “layered” approach to citations. We can mix-and-match the layers as needed. The QuickCheck Model demonstrates one record type at one website. If you use a different website that is structured in a different way, as in this case, then you model that layer on a pattern for the website structure you are using. EE offers many examples of citing Ancestry database.

Source List Entry:

Your citation is this:

Warwickshire, 1939 England and Wales Register. Digital Image. The National Archives, Key, London, England. Ancestry. https://www.ancestry.com : 2020.

Tweak 1: For source list entries (aka entries in a bibliography), a period separates each element of the citation. The jurisdiction “Warwickshire” is one entity or element. The record set “1939 England and Wales Register” is a different entity or element. The two should not be linked by a comma; they need a period to separate them.

Tweak 2:  Here, you need to revise the Ancestry part of the citation to reflect the issues discussed under Problems 1 and 2 above.

P.S. One favor please. It would help me and others who follow your query, if you would type your citation into your message rather than providing a screen grab of your software templet. That way, your citation can be edited as needed, and those who are following your example won't have to open up a separate screen to follow your query and my response.

 

Curtisk2,

Let’s work through the issues with your Full Reference Note. Once you understand those issues, you should be able to see the similar ones in the Subsequent Reference Note and the Source List Entry.  The draft that you label “Footnote” (though the format also functions for endnotes) is this:

      1.  1939 England and Wales Register, Warwickshire, Birmingham, p. 7, line. 7, George W Whitehouse; digital image, Ancestry.com, Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.co.uk/interactive/61596/tna_r39_5532_5532b_007?pid=33926418&backurl=https://search.ancestry.co.uk/cgi-bin/sse.dll?indiv%3Dtry%26db%3D1939UKRegister%26h%3D33926418&treeid=&personid=&hintid=&usePUB=true&usePUBJs=true&_ga=2.154099192.1516356755.1592039086-1825025262.1590844228: downloaded 18 May 2020); citing The National Archives; Kew, London, England; 1939 Register; Reference: RG 101/5532B

I have added distinctive colors to each of the three layers to help with analysis.

Issue 1:

In Layer 1, after you identify the source, you proceed with the part of the citation that tells us where in the source we will find the specific item of interest. However, essential detail is missing. Without it, your readers (and you, after your recollection of the source has gone cold—or after the URL goes bad) cannot find the entry. What you give us is this:

Warwickshire, Birmingham, p. 7, line. 7, George W Whitehouse

In the 1939 Register, “Warwickshire, Birmingham” is broken down into hundreds of districts. Each district has its own seventh page.  From the four data points above, your reader does not know which of those hundreds of district to search.  I used the search box for “George W. Whitehouse” and found three such men in Birmingham, but none of them appear on a “p. 7.” I found one that appeared on Ancestry’s image 7. But an Ancestry image is not a page number. Remember this:

• In your layer that focuses on the document, you cite the document’s ID, including page number if relevant. 
• When you get to the point of citing Ancestry, then you cite Ancestry’s data, including the image number.
• In short: if something belongs to the original document, do not cite it in the layer for the website. If a piece of data belongs to the website, do not attach it to the original record.

If you’ll review Chapter 6 on censuses (which includes models for England), you will see that when censuses were taken past the mid-1800s, the population for most counties was so large that the enumeration for a county was broken down into subdivisions. They may be called Enumeration Districts (ED) or boroughs, or towns, or townships, or subdistricts. Whatever name they are called in each time and place, we need to include that in our citation in order to find the record again. As you can see in the SnagIt below, the locational data typically appears at the head of the page:

Putting all this together, your Layer 1 would be this:

     1. 1939 England and Wales Register, Birmingham (Warwickshire), E.D. QAUR, Registration District/Sub-district 384/5, 289 St. Vincent St., George W. Whitehouse; ...

You'll note that "line number" is not cited because that census does not use line numbers. Instead, it cites people by house number and street name.

Issue 2

In Layer 2, the very long URL does not work for me. Most URLs this long will not work for others, for one reason or another. When we copy a URL into our citation, we can go to a different browser and test the URL to see if it still works there. (If you try to test in the same browser, it will draw your document from the cache, rather than test the URL.)

When we use Ancestry's search form, and it gives us a hit that has a long URL of this type, look for the first question mark. We can shorten the URL at that point. In your case, a short, working URL would be this:

https://www.ancestry.com/interactive/61596/tna_r39_5532_5532b_007

(For me, working in the US, the extension after “www.ancestry” is .com.  For you, it’s .co.)

Issue 3

Because Ancestry is a mammoth website, with over 30,000 databases, our citation needs to identify the specific database. That is missing from the citation.  (Yes, "1939 England and Wales Register" is cited in Layer 1 because it's the name of the record set. But many times, a website provider such as Ancestry will combine several datasets into one larger database with a different name.)  If we combine the addition of the database name with the shorter URL and the need to cite the Ancestry's image number, the result for Layer 2 is this:

… imaged from “1939 England and Wales Register,” Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com/interactive/61596/tna_r39_5532_5532b_007 : downloaded 13 June 2020), image 7 of 15.

You’ll note several things here:

Issue 4

Citing a website is analogous to citing a book, in its formatting. The basics are these:

• When we cite the title to a book or any other standalone publication (book, website, CD, DVD, journal, map, etc.), we place the title of that publication in italics. 
• When we cite a part of that standalone publication (chapter in a book, database at a website, article in a journal, etc.) we place the exact title of the part in quotation marks.

This, and more, is covered at EE 2.2 “Citing Titles: Basic Rules.” Yes, this matters. It's not just nitpicking. As you get deeper into research, you'll discover why. But this posting is so long that I won't get into all the ways it matters. EE does that. So do various postings in the blog and forums here at EE's website.

Issue 5

When a website is eponymously named, we do not have to repeat the name three times: (1) the owner/creator field, (2) the title field, and (3) the URL—i.e.,

Ancestry.com, Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com …

 If you take a quick glance at any of the Ancestry citations in EE, you’ll find only this:

Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com …

Issue 6

When we cite a website’s publication data (the information that goes in parentheses), we leave a space after the URL before placing the colon. That way, when our software creates a hotlink, it will not include the colon in the hotlink (another issue that can make a URL unusable).

Issue 7

In Layer 3, you have copied the exact words that Ancestry uses for its “Source Citation”—i.e., The National Archives; Kew, London, England; 1939 Register; Reference: RG 101/5532B. Any time we copy words exactly from another source, we put those words into quotation marks. EE 2.72 tells us this:

2.72 Quotation marks

Quotation marks can be the most important punctuation devices in the tool kit of researchers and writers. They are the tools we use to guard against errors, avoid plagiarism, and prevent unintentional violations of copyright. As prompters on the stage of history, they silently shout an aside in almost every scene: “When you see me, it means that my words are copied exactly from another source!”   …

In sum:

Putting all these points together, the final draft of the First Reference Note would be this:

1. 1939 England and Wales Register, Birmingham (Warwickshire), E.D. QAUR, Registration District/Sub-district 384/5, 289 St. Vincent St., George W. Whitehouse; imaged from … “1939 England and Wales Register,” Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.co/interactive/61596/tna_r39_5532_5532b_007 : accessed 13 June 2020), image 7 of 15; citing “The National Archives; Kew, London, England; 1939 Register; Reference: RG 101/5532B.”