Wikitree standards for citing German church records from archion.de

Question

I'm still very new at putting together WikiTree profiles. Could somebody from the German Roots project please look at my profile for Johannes Geschwind (https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Geschwind-37) and tell me whether I'm citing the church records from archion.de correctly?  Thanks!

Answer 1

In the case of sources behind a pay wall it is important to give as much detail as possible, which you did naming the parish, the archive, the type of record. The only thing I would change is not only giving the link (which does only go to a page telling us that we are not authorized to see the record) but actually listing Archion as the source.

Comments

Thank you very much for looking at this for me!

Answer 2

I have fixed the links in your references which addresses what Helmut suggested. And is more accurate for sourcing on wikitree. I think you have done a fantastic job. I enjoyed reading the profile and the one for his father. Well done with LNAB (last name at birth) for the father's surname change. You have recorded that information perfectly also! 

Comments

Thank you for fixing the links - and for the encouraging feedback!

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You are most welcome.

Answer 3

Very nice profile!  The only other thing you might want to do is upload a pdf of the record.  Last time I read the Archion license it said there were no restrictions on the pdf's you download.  Of course most of the subscriptions limit the number pdf's you can download, so you might not have them for every record you cite.

In my case, my ability to transcribe the old script and translate to English is somewhat limited so I'm always hopeful someone else will look at the pdf and add something I missed, but so far that hasn't happened.

Comments

Thank you for your comment, Paige! Yeah, I guess a PDF would be nice, but even on my annual subscription I am limited to 600 downloads, and I will end up with lots more than 600 references! I would also like to think that serious researchers into German genealogy will eventually become archion subscribers (and I do think the site is definitely worthy of support - I am now able to do this from home at relatively little cost, while my father in 1990 had to travel to Germany and knock on the door of various parish offices to accomplish anything. But the site does need support - it is already so popular that at times it is difficult to get their page to load, so I suspect they could use the money for some server upgrades).

Oh, and if you have some German entries you'd like me to look at, I'd be more than happy to help.

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Thanks for your kind offer of lookups, but I don't need anything at the moment.

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When it comes to Archion church records, I'm really partial to what Danny Gutknecht and I have adopted, which is including in the profile a transcription of the records followed by a translation. As an English speaker, and a modern person, I find the archaic German forms and practices very interesting. Recently, I located an 18th century German-language newspaper article that we knew from secondary sources contained material pertaining to the person we were working on, however, we didn't have rights to post the images to the web. So we used our transcription/translation standard on it too. Here's the profile as an example: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Buchner-671

Answer 4

I suggest you put the fact that it's on Archion to the front and let us not assume it from the link:

"German Church Books online", digital images, Archion (https://www.archion.de/) > Kurhessen-Waldeck: Landeskirchliches Archiv Kassel > Wolfhagen > Wolfhagen > Tauf 1830-1846 > Nummer 19 http://www.archion.de/p/53547f258d/ ....

Is "Nummer 19" called "Bild 19" = "Image 19" on the website/in the viewer? If so, I would use "Bild 19" as you already give navigation details.

Given the explicit mention of Archion and its URL you can hide the URL to the detail page:

"German Church Books online", digital images, Archion (https://www.archion.de/) > Kurhessen-Waldeck: Landeskirchliches Archiv Kassel > Wolfhagen > Wolfhagen > Tauf 1830-1846 > Bild 19  ....

You may want to add the access date to the main url of Archion "(http://www.archion.de/ : accessed on 26 July 2020)" because who knows what archion.de will look like in 20 years. Plus, it's standard for citing URLs.

The fact that the original source is from "Landeskirchliches Archiv Kassel" is already in the description so I think mentioning the original source (the name of the archive where you can find the physical church book) is not necessary in this case.

Note: I used this article as inspiration.

Comments

Thank you for your comments, Erik. That format does make sense.

As for the "Nummer 19" - this is a case where a Taufbuch has no page numbers, but has sequentially numbered each baptism, so this is baptism nr. 19 (near the very beginning of the book). Should I make this more explicit by labeling it "baptism nr. 19" or something like that?

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"Baptism Nr. 19" - that's fine. As an alternative I would use "entry nr. 19" or "Eintrag Nr. 19".

I was referring to "Bild 19" as it appears on the left side of the "viewer" in the sample church books I can access without subscription on Archion.

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I know this is a very old thread but it is useful for me.

I am starting to use Archion as a source. You mentioned hiding the URL to the detail page. How do you do this, please?

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In the reference, use

[http://www.archion.de/p/53547f258d/ Bild 19]

as described at

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Adding_Links#Links_to_Other_Websites

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Thank you very much.

Answer 5

I've tried to follow your model, but I am getting Errors: Error 967: Link error in domain. And Error 962: Domain name in link not resolved. See https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Holzberger-35 as an example of a page which generates these errors. Is it because I used the .en rather than .de extension? Your links and mine do not, of course, link to the image since a subscription is required, as we indicate in the Source material. Maybe I should just mark these suggestions as Not corrected? Do you get these suggestions too? Thank you for any advice.

Comments

Sorry, but the link is working; no problem tpo get to the record.

The problem is that you don't have a a subsription.

This is the direct link with de and en:

https://www.archion.de/en/viewer/?type=churchRegister&uid=298110&pageId=41515492&zoom=12&degree=0&coords=2037%2C3655

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I'm sorry, but I don't understand your reply. I DO have a subscription to Arhcion. When I am not logged in to Archion (as the average used of wikitree would be) your link does the same as what my link does: these links take people to the front page of Archion, not to the image. Someone who does not have a subscription to Archion cannot login to Archion so cannot be taken to the image no matter what link is provided. My question remains: how do I take care of the Errors?

Perhaps I can omit any link to Archion and provide instead a pdf or other file containing the image from Archion. I am concerned, however, about violating copyright of Archion.

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You must be signed in to archion otherwise the link doesn't work. You should ignore the error message.

There is no copyright of archion if you downloaded the record legally; see No. 9.3.5 of the "General Terms & Conditions (T&C)":

9.3.5. Individual items of Digital Content which the User downloads with the help of the integrated download function are not subject to any usage restrictions imposed by the Provider.

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Thank you, Dieter. I will ignore the Errors.

If I understand the T&C, images downloaded as pdfs, and thus counting toward my quota, have no restrictions. Images gotten via screen capture are not covered by 9.3.5, so may be subject to usage restrictions.

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Screen shot is not a legal download, but images officially downloaded within your quotation have no usage restrictions.

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Got it. Thank you.

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I just tried the link when I wasn't logged in at all.  The paywall I hit told me to log in to proceed to the image and when I logged it, it took me straight to the specific image in a view focused on that record.  That is what I think the permalink is designed to do.

Answer 6

I am mostly working with a select set of Catholic church records on Archion which have been made public there but not yet made public on Family Search primarily because FS files are larger matching entire microfilm rolls and sometimes a few newer records are still protected by EU privacy law.  I anticipate that eventually FS will chop up their rolls into smaller digital chunks like Archion did to make the unprotected records available.  So for my research and that of my collaborators it is essential that I include enough information to match to the Family Search indexes and also to the Family Search microfilms.  So I've created a citation format that looks very much like the citations I use to FS Catholiic records in German territories.  For the web link part of the citation, I make sure I create a permalink on Archion for the specific image I'm using.

Katholische Kirche Hayna (BA. Landau), Band 7, Heiraten 1682-1860, Firmungen 1746-1783, Erstkommunionen 1749, Film No. LM 1099 (Genealogical Society, Salt Lake City, Utah, 14 Mar 1961), Archiv des Bistums Speyer (ABSp) 14.001.049.09, image 84 of 436, top right page 25, bottom page 83, 5 Mar 1759, Death of Georg Martin Wingerter , subscription access from Archion available at (https://www.archion.de/p/66ad3fd114/: accessed 29 Jan 2024)

I tried to create a citation format which was reasonably similar to the formats used in Evidence Explained.

Today, I've begun to realize that sometimes I can even figure out which Family History Library film number and DGS image group it will be on, but I'm not sure enough of that yet to always include that information.  But I make sure to include all the page numbers on the image I'm working with because it is hard to tell which ones were original, which were added with the original filming (and also show on later images that added their own as well.)

If I think the information would help me find the record in another version of images, I add it.  I try not to leave out anything that would help someone else find the image in another source.

All that said, I do have to say that I'm not nearly as proficient in figuring out how to include all the available information when I'm working with records of a type I'm not really familiar with or in languages I'm just beginning to figure out especially when I'm not sure which identifying marks will help someone else find the record or what information they convey.

Do your best and err on the side of including more information than necessary.  We all have to learn by starting somewhere and most of us improve as we learn.

Comments

I can also recommend using the browser plug-in WikiTree BEE for source citations, please see https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:WikiTree_BEE#Source_citations

Answer 7

WikiTree BEE supports generating source citations for Archion. You would "just" need to fill in the number of the record, maybe the page number of the actual book as well as an optional transcript or translation.