Citing sources from scotlandspeople - examples?

Question

I am about to start adding my Scottish lines. Many of the sources I have are from Scotlandspeople and do not have an equivalent record on familysearch. Can anyone point me to good examples of how to format a scotlandspeople source citation please?

Answer 1

Here is one of mine: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Rae-1026, which uses both a statutory and a church record. I copied these from my Rootsmagic tree, and the way I set them up there is to label the separate "databases" as either statutory or church records, and specifying birth, marriage, death, but that's probably not necessary as long as it is clear where the info comes from. The main thing is the link to the website, and enough information to search for the records. I could improve these citations by adding more specific dates and counties/parishes at the end; presently you have to find that info in the body of the biography.

Comments

Thanks Darcie. Your link didn’t work, but I found your Rae-1026 and like the technique you have used, so I think I will follow your guidance. Have you managed to find anything on the scotlandspeople website that automatically provides a citation or are you writing them manually?

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Rootsmagic helps you format citations in accordance with the book Evidence Explained. It gives you fields to fill in and then formats it automatically for you. But now that I'm familiar with the format I can do them manually as well. For any website with search results and records and I can use this format:

Database Author, "Database Title," item type, e.g. database with images, Creator or Owner of the Website, Title of Website (Website URL : [AccessDate] ), [ItemOfInterest]; citing Credit Line, e.g. source of the source.

Often Database Author, Creator/Owner and Title of the Website are all the same, e.g. Ancestry.com or FamilySearch.org - that seems to be sufficient. But for something like ScotlandsPeople, it may not be clear that it is private or government owned, so I add info to clarify that. And Credit Line is usually only important when it is a private company using a public record, for instance Ancestry citing a government repository for census records. The items in square brackets will be different for every entry, depending on the specific record. This is where I would add the name, date, location, etc. - the information you need to search for the record.

Some people here on Wikitree would like to see the URLs take you directly to the image or search result you are citing, but I usually don't do this, partly because I am not including this info in my Rootsmagic sources and would need to go back to the website, and also because it makes the URLs very long and messy in the citation. I think providing the link to the main website and enough information to find it with a search is sufficient.

Hope that helps!

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One other thing that you may find helpful if you create manual citations - I paste the ones I use repeatedly into a text document "cheat sheet." I pull that up when I am working on Wiki profiles, and can quickly paste in the ones I need.

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Thanks Darcie.

Answer 2

The  Univ of Strathclyde referencing guide  for Genealogy might give you a starting point though I suspect that you would need to expand some of the abreviations used.

https://www.strath.ac.uk/media/1newwebsite/centres/centreforlifelonglearning/Referencing_guide_2016-17_final.pdf

Comments

Thanks Helen. That is useful. It would still be interesting to see some examples on existing profiles though, so I hope someone can suggest some.

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I don't think I've ever cited it in a profile; anything North of the Birmingham is unknown territory!

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Had to laugh at that one Helen. Birmingham is the deep south as far as my bit of the tree is concerned. I have a small handful in Shropshire and a brick wall in Lancs, but everything else in my direct lines is from Northumberland or Scotland :)

Answer 3

This is one of my Scottish profiles I have sourced from Scotlands People:

Kennedy-3079

Comments

Thanks Vivian. That was helpful. I see that your citations include reference to the record being held at New Register House in Edinburgh. Do you know if there is any indication on the website as to whether the individual record is actually held there. I know that the majority are, but some original records are held at local locations such as the border archives at Hawick Heritage Hub.

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I have just checked Scotlands People & this is all I could find: https://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk/visit-us

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Yes, I am aware of their contact info and have also used their online catalogue to find which location holds which records before visiting, but I don’t think they have that type of information on the individual record.

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Anything that has an image attached in the OPRs, statutory registers, census returns and valuation rolls is held by the National Records of Scotland in Edinburgh, although many local archives also have microfilm copies of the same records.  I'm not totally clear about who holds the originals for the RC records that are now online.

Answer 4

Hi Lynda, I tend to just copy and paste from the index entry on ScotlandsPeople then prefix it with either index or certificate - there's an example at https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Hope-1728 with a mix of OPRs, statutory registers and census entries so you can see what I mean.  Now that the search results page on SP is free to view, it's easy to go back and re-do the search to get the correct details for images I've downloaded in the past where I've forgotten to make a note of the reference numbers :-)