New app: Irish Sites Citation Creator

Question

Just in time for the 2023 spring Connect a thon, there is a new app for creating source citations on four popular Irish websites.

The Irish Sites Citation Creator will create source citations for births, baptisms, marriages, deaths, or burial records found on RootsIreland.ie, IrishGenealogy.ie, or in the Catholic Parish Registers on NLI (National Library of Ireland). It can also be used to create source citations for Census entries on The National Archives of Ireland website.

The app has the option to create a Bio segment to go along with the citation, based on the details found. You can use it for inline ref or end style citations, your choice.

Watch a demo on YouTube of adding all 4 types of citations to a single profile.

Eventually, my plan is to take the logic from this app and incorporate it into Rob Pavey’s excellent WikiTree Sourcerer extension, so if things don’t work as expected, now is the time to fix it.  Please let me know if you find bugs, or some type of record, or browser that doesn’t work properly. However the app will always be available, for the benefit of those who don’t use extensions, never fear.

A huge thanks goes out to Paddy Waldron for his help and advice in testing this app, and also for correcting my Irish mis-pronunciations!

Comments

Spring?    It's Autumn down under!

Seriously,  thank you for all your effort.

Answer 1

Great job Greg. This is going to help a lot.

Answer 2

This looks interesting, and I will hopefully try it later today (middle of the night here so I have sound turned off so I will rewatch the video later!), and try on a PC rather the iPad I’m on now.

Just a query, if using it to add census details, will the family be listed in the order they appear on the screen? Sometimes the order doesn’t always match the order on the form so the head of the family may be listed in the middle.

Comments

By default, it will use the same order as on the web page.  However, you can always edit the citation text before you copy it into the profile.  Or, alternatively, you could swap the people around in the fields labelled Line 1, Line 2, Line 3 , etc.., so they are in the desired order, then click in the Compile Citation button. (Just be careful you don’t miss anyone during the shuffle.)

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Thank you.

Answer 3

Thanks for creating this app, Greg.  It is going to be a great help.

Answer 4

Tried it with the Irish census. Very good BUT if there is more than one person in the house it does not seems possible to get text and citation for each person. In fact I don't see how you can get one for each person other then moving the names around which is an unnecessary fiddle. Even if you do that the text still takes the top person from the census site and only changes the names order in the citation.

Comments

Additionally an Irish Genealogy record failed to work at all. Compile citation did nothing.

This was the record so you can check it yourself.

Personally I would prefer it if one had the facility to add the line number into the citation, but only a minor point.

ETA: Another point. If you can access the record to determine the death, birth ,marriage etc why can you not with both the Irish Genealogy and Census web sites access the data on the site and save having to copy and paste? Computers should definitely be used to make us lazy! (Edited because I forgot about all the hoops it is required to jump through for Irish Genealogy) Edited: Seems you cannot directly see the census info either.

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Tried several Irish Genealogy records now. None working.

Windows 11 Pro: fully up to date
Firefox for the IG site: 112.0.1 (64-bit) (Up to date)
Opera for the App: Version:97.0.4719.83

Opera is not fully up to date. Updating and will try again

ETA:Updated. Version:98.0.4759.6

Problem persists.

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Good points David. For the census citations I definitely created the Auto Bio blurb assuming the Head of Family perspective.  Since the record is house-based, the same url and citation would work for everyone in the house was my thinking.  But, as you point out, it would be nice to have the focus person for the bio be anyone.  Hmm.  Definitely doable.

As for having to copy and paste the text, that’s because some servers don’t like to talk to other servers without direct interaction, else they open themselves for attacks by bots. Hence this workaround in the standalone app.  However, when this logic is eventually added to the Sourcerer extension, then it will be able to do this automatically. Alas, that is now looking like a summer project for me, not right away.

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I just discovered that you cannot directly access the texts on the census. :(

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On the assumption that people will wish to create all the people on the census form (because we don't want to use the Needs Profiles category do we ) a citation, bio block for each 'contestant' would definitely be useful but yes if you can select one as the prime candidate and create a citation based one that it would be OK as well.

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Thanks David for your feedback ... I've been testing this on all the browsers I have available on my Mac (Safari, Chrome, Firefox, Opera) - and - have needed to tweak the code so that all of them behave themselves.  I don't have a Windows machine to run similar tests on.

However, if the CTRL  + A (to select all text) followed by thenCTRL + C (to copy) doesn't actually select any text for you ... we're kind of euchred .. I'm not sure why the text wouldn't be selectable.   

One thing I noticed was that if my cursor was actually last in the URL bar, unless I clicked (hard) or double-clicked to highlight a word in the body of the webpage, it sometimes didn't select the text on the page, it stayed up in the URL bar.

Any other Windows users out there who can shed some light on what browsers / Irish website combos work and/or don't work?

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Ctrl+A and Ctrl+C work just fine as does Ctrl+V to paste into the box but having filled that and the web address and set options clicking Compile Citation does absolutely nothing.

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The problem with using the app in Windows has been fixed. If you have had the problem and still have the app open please close it and it should now work.

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Just in time delivery for the post March equinox Connect-a-Thon:  If you are doing a Census record, there is now a separate Source Citation for each person in the record if you have the Bio field turned on (if that is not selected, the raw <ref> Source Citation </ref> is the same for everyone anyways, so there's only the one to choose from )

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Thankyou for recognising that for half the world it's autumn.

 Now, if only the spell checker would recognise that a good part of the English speaking world uses a s, not a z.

Answer 5

Very exciting! Several times a day I wish that Sourcerer worked on these very sites

Answer 6

Great start Greg!

How does the Register Image come into play? I added the image URL for the 1901 census page in that field, but it did not seem to add anything to the citation.

Comments

Ha!  I wondered if anyone would try that ... and ... you did.  I hadn't actually thought anyone would use the image (3rd / optional entry field), with the Census records, since the URL gives you the full details (mostly) - and is a great jumping off point if you want to see the individual house return, or the house and buildings sheet (which I found VERY helpful - nice Easter egg there!).

SO ... you're right - at the moment - I have been ignoring that field if you are doing a Census .... BUT ... I can treat it like I treat it for the other types of records, and add it as an additional link in the citation.

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You’re right, the record page without the image link is fine for all those reasons. I was just wondering if I was doing something wrong.

I later tried it with an irishgenealogy.ie birth record and it worked great, image and all.

Thanks again!

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I've just added the logic so that if you DO add a link to a census page image (either the Household Return or the House and Building Return), then that link is added at the end of the citation.  So you can have your cake and eat it too!  Enjoy!

Answer 7

Hi Greg, not my area of expertise, but it surely will help a lot of people. Can you provide a get parameter, where one could add the URL (and maybe also the other stuff that needs to be taken from the original site)? Maybe one could then do a bookmarklet to be able to trigger your app from the site already.

Comments

Ah ... similar to the magic you worked with the Antenati site ... good idea  - I think that's doable for the URL part - I don't think the text scraping that currently relies on the copy & paste will work that way... but at least the URL could be fed in automatically with a bookmarklet.

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You could prompt the user to paste the text into a prompt() and attach that to the url ...

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Taking it back. I wasn't aware that this works without an actual form. In that case, I would really need those URL parameters

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I just included the CCCC into BEE. Want this one included as well?

Answer 8

Greg, I also want to "Thank You!" for the new app., just in the spirit of that thing! Because I'll never know how to use it! (embarrassed smile) When I went to HS 1964-68 computers were just being introduced & I was never exposed to them, I was lucky that I got through Typing Class. So I'm just a tyro barely able to manage, so while I enjoy heating about all of the things it will help with, I'm not able to participate. (wry rueful grin) Wish yt would help me, my Mother's side's all Irish, her Mother was born in Cork City in May 1887 & her Father's parents came over from Co. Kilkenny before he was born in Peabody/Salem, MA in 1889. Be well, Jack MacDonald-Hilton from Worcester, MA.

Answer 9

I have at last started to dive into sourcing and overcoming my fears of "doing it all wrong," as well as building my own database of citation formats.  This citation creator worked AMAZINGLY well for an unsourced profile and a baptism record I found behind the paywall at Rootsireland.  I am just following along with your youtube example.  All of my ancestors are Irish, so this will be so very useful.

Comments

Thanks Joy!  I'm so glad it's working well for you.  Good luck with all your research!

Answer 10

I just used your tool and found it to be exceptional for building a credible biography and sources. Thanks so much for creating this app.