Disambiguate pre-made citations, sources, exact referencing

LegacyUser

David Townsend Palmer said: Now the result in searching FamilySearch records is a summary screen with a pre-made citation, that a user can click to add to the target individual's Source page. This pre-made citation is usually an ambiguous, for example, "England Births and Christenings..." that includes all of England, parish registers, bishop's transcripts, and who knows what else in it. Many times, it includes no film numbers. When it does include film numbers, it includes several. Searching for one given film number might give 20 items on the same film. So that the next researcher must spend tedious time trying to exactly identify the reference. Unfortunately, Ancestry.com followed Familysearch's example and is doing the same. Oh My

So, Can FamilySearch please restructure and disambiguate the pre-made reference to show exact referencing. Can it point to, and only point to the exact film number, and exactly unambiguosly describe the source, for example,

Church of England. Parish Church of Norton Disney, "Bishop's Transcripts, 1562~1836." Manuscript, Lincolnshire Archives Office, Lincoln, UK. And, Microfilm and limited online access, Family History Library, Salt Lake City. FHL#504583 item 2 & 508022 item 6).

There are rules of evidence, which are based upon facts, from primary sources. These sources must be unambiguous so that the next researcher can replicate the same conclusion.

Now we have many users adding many citations to the Source page from several different 2ndary repositories such as Ancestry, FamilySearch, etc. They could all actually be based upon the same entry in one Bishop's Transcripts, but because of how the pre-made citations are made, we don't know. It is impossible to know that they are indeed the same.

Please remove the ambiguity, noise, and frustration.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: In most instances, the "pre-made" citation contains the URL to the actual record. That is far from ambiguous, but rather specific.

Using the URL to the specific record, paste it as a response to my reply. That way, we can take a look at what you are looking at. There are a number of experienced users that can respond to issues concerning the British collections and they can add their comments to what you are experiencing.

LegacyUser

joe martel said: Citations can be extremely unique to a collection and how it is digitized and utilized. So generic citations tends to be the most cost effective, though not as specific as most would like. I wish the citation would get me to the original record, the image, the actual artifact in that image (where there are multiple records, and to the specific reginon on that image, say a person in a household on the census). You can imagine that is a very time consuming and expensive endeavor.  Much of the citations try to follow a standard or an approach like those illustrated in Evidence Explained by Elizabeth Shown Mills, say for URL/internet based citations.