Platform Independent Citations for US Census
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James Cobban said: Not being a citizen of the United States of America I am finding it difficult to figure out how to cite to a specific page of a US census in a platform independent manner. When I go to a specific service, for example FamilySearch, it suggests a citation that will only work on that service. For example FamilySearch provides the FHL microfilm reel number in place of the NARA roll number although you can get the NARA identification from the catalog. Similarly Ancestry only provides citations that work on Ancestry. In many cases platforms include URLs within the platform as part of the citation. NARA is silent on the issue of how to cite the census. Fellow researchers who started their research before the digital age use citations that are also platform dependent, it is just that the platform they are dependent upon is the NARA microfilm roll identification. But clearly the microfilm roll number was not part of the original identification of the census. I do not use the microfilm reel numbers to identify the specific page in my research on the Canadian census even though I started my research back in the days of microfilm, because once again the microfilm reel number was created only in the 1950s and therefore is not a natural part of the citation especially now that the microfilm is technologically obsolescent. But I have spent over years searching the web trying to find out how to cite a US census in a platform independent manner and I cannot find any useful advice.
For the Canadian Census I write citations such as:
1891 Census of Canada : dist 93 Middlesex West, subdist F Mosa, div 2 page 9
The placenames are only present in this citation to make them more easily understandable by a human viewer, only the codes are used to identify the specific original image and the transcription of that image. For example on my own site the citation is linked to a transcription at https://www.jamescobban.net/database/.... The organization of the 1891 Census of Canada is described by https://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/census/... but I cannot find an equivalent for any US census.
As a specific example, which prompts this request for assistance, consider Samuel Clarke https://www.jamescobban.net/FamilyTre.... I am trying to find out what happened to this individual after he and his family apparently vanished off the face of the earth after 1910.
I have fundamental questions. Clearly the page number and enumeration district number are platform independent, deriving from the original census administration, but I cannot find any explanation of how the enumeration districts are numbered. They are most obviously not within the microfilm rolls since those roll numbers were introduced decades later, even though pre-digital researchers frequently used the roll numbers together with the ED numbers since I imagine the combination of the roll, ED, and page provides a unique identifier of the image. Pointing me at NARA microfilm publication A3378 or the FamilySearch copy is not helpful especially while access to microfilm is prevented by the pandemic. Steven Morse's tools may be helpful to someone who already understands the census organization but are just confusing to an outsider who is just getting started. For example I have a lot of people in my family tree who lived in St Clair county Michigan, but when I select St Clair county Michigan on Steven Morse's site it returns nothing. I have tried entering township names but every query returns *** No EDs found ***.
For the Canadian Census I write citations such as:
1891 Census of Canada : dist 93 Middlesex West, subdist F Mosa, div 2 page 9
The placenames are only present in this citation to make them more easily understandable by a human viewer, only the codes are used to identify the specific original image and the transcription of that image. For example on my own site the citation is linked to a transcription at https://www.jamescobban.net/database/.... The organization of the 1891 Census of Canada is described by https://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/census/... but I cannot find an equivalent for any US census.
As a specific example, which prompts this request for assistance, consider Samuel Clarke https://www.jamescobban.net/FamilyTre.... I am trying to find out what happened to this individual after he and his family apparently vanished off the face of the earth after 1910.
I have fundamental questions. Clearly the page number and enumeration district number are platform independent, deriving from the original census administration, but I cannot find any explanation of how the enumeration districts are numbered. They are most obviously not within the microfilm rolls since those roll numbers were introduced decades later, even though pre-digital researchers frequently used the roll numbers together with the ED numbers since I imagine the combination of the roll, ED, and page provides a unique identifier of the image. Pointing me at NARA microfilm publication A3378 or the FamilySearch copy is not helpful especially while access to microfilm is prevented by the pandemic. Steven Morse's tools may be helpful to someone who already understands the census organization but are just confusing to an outsider who is just getting started. For example I have a lot of people in my family tree who lived in St Clair county Michigan, but when I select St Clair county Michigan on Steven Morse's site it returns nothing. I have tried entering township names but every query returns *** No EDs found ***.
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