How to Share Sources on WikiTree

Profile manager: Rick Pierpont [send private message]

How to Share Sources on WikiTree

Genealogy depends on sources and the citations that reference these sources. This page describes a method to document and share these sources with each other, and with the rest of the genealogical community beyond WikiTree.^[1] Collaboration is what WikiTree is all about. Collaboration can be extended to include Sources.

Many genealogical sources are available for free on the internet. There are also several paysites with the same information. These pay sites have excellent search capabilities. Many times these search results will lead you to a document that is also available, elsewhere, for free. When possible, the free site should be referenced here on WikiTree. These free sources are too numerous to count. When they are found, the should be documented and shared with everyone.

WikiTree has some excellent features to allow you to share these sources with others: Free-Space Pages, Tags, and Categories. They can also be marked with dates and location.

Create a Free-Space Page for each source.

This is best for sources that can be used on many WikiTree profiles and sources you want to share with others. There are many paysites for good sources. Many of the sources are also available online for free. When possible, direct people to one of these free sites. There may be many free online locations for the source. List all that can be found.

All sources will have errors in them. No single source should be considered infallible. Both good and bad sources should be referenced. Document the bad information, explain why it is bad, and then use the good information with the proper source. If we don't document this bad information, others may not know what is correct and delete the good information.

Why a Free-Space Page?

Free-Space pages are for anything that is not a person's profile or a Category. Free-Space pages can support anything, including a source. There are several features of Free-Space pages that can help support the sharing of source information:

1. Security: This can be Open or Closed to a group of people. Most sources should be open so that anyone can contribute. Maybe some of the more popular sources will have to be closed.
2. Trusted List: All members of the list will be notified of changes to the source.
3. Tags: All members following the "Tag" will be notified of changes to the source.
4. Categories: Categories can be used to group together sources that support one another. (based on location or time-period.)
5. Location: Each source can be assigned a geographical location, to describe the contents of the book.
6. Date: Each source can be assigned a time period (start and end date), to describe the contents of the book.

How to create a Free-Space Page for a Source

Free-Space pages can be created here: https://www.wikitree.com/index.php?action=newspace. The problem with using that link is that any page you create will be, initially, unconnected to anything within WikiTree. A better way is to create the Free-Space page link within another page. This other page can be your WikiTree profile or another Free-Space. This is how you create a Free-Space Page link:

[[Space:Free-Space_pagename|Free-Space_pagename]]

Once this link is created (ex: in your profile), you can click on it at any time to create the page or jump to the page.

Items to include in your Free-Space page

Examples

Examples of Things to include in the Free-Space page:

1. Title
2. author
3. publisher
4. description
5. External links to all locations where the book can be found
6. include all editions of the book
7. include all volumes within the same Free-Space page. Don't make a separate page for each volume.
8. Source Text: Include an example, with wikitext, showing how to add the source. This text can then be copy-and-pasted to the bottom of any profile. Include a link back to the Free-Space page for the source using the syntax: [[Space:Free-Space_pagename|name of source]]
9. Citation Text: Include an example citation, with wikitext. This text can then be copy-and-pasted as an inline citation, within the body of the biography section.
10. Links/Repositories (don't hide URL, to better find duplicates)
11. (When citing a source, a direct link to the exact page in the source should be provided. This does not have to be shown in the example.)

Also include:

1. Tags
2. Categories
3. Location
4. Start and End Dates

Repositories

(all have OCR, but not all the same quality)

• Google Books: https://books.google.com/ excellent in-document search interface, although it only shows a few pages at a time. unique ability to prioritize search results using multiple search terms
• Archive.org: https://archive.org/ contains books still in copyright, that may be borrowed and read online. excellent in-document search interface, and shows all pages at the same time. can not prioritize search results. several different document formats, including download PDF.
• Hathi Trust: https://www.hathitrust.org/ poor in-document search interface. unique ability to rotate an individual page, great for pedigree charts.

Some other possible Repositories:

• Family Search: https://books.familysearch.org
• Library of Congress: https://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/libsci/fulltext.html
• Smithsonian Libraries: http://library.si.edu/
• Project Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/
• The Online Books Page: http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/
• Johns Hopkins: https://jscholarship.library.jhu.edu/

Internal and External Links

An external link is any link in a profile that does not link to a page on WikiTree. These types of links can look confusing. Here are some examples:

• http://www.worcesterhistory.org/about/museum-history/
• https://archive.org/stream/proceedingsofwor00worca#page/n227/mode/2up

These types of links are very resourceful because they can link to any place on the internet. The problem with these types of links is that the internet keeps changing, and therefore links move and links disappear. Even if the link still works, the information at the link may change. There are many links on WikiTree that do not work.

Another idea is to use "Internal Links." Internal links are links that you provide in a profile that link to other pages within WikiTree. These do not include the entire URL, just a link that only WikiTree understands. Here are some examples

• [[Space:Free-Space_Page_Name]]
• [[Smith-9399949|Robert Smith]]

These internal links will never move or disappear. In practice, for sources, it is always best to provide the external link to the exact page being cited, and include the internal link to where more source information can be found. This allows the viewer to get quick access to the source (via the external link) and gives them access to additional information about the source, which includes other external links (from the internal link).

What Links Here

The "What Links Here" feature within WikiTree is a link that creates a list of all the profiles that use the source. It can show you who else has used the source and how widely used the source is on WikiTree

[[Special:Whatlinkshere/Space:Free-Space_pagename|WikiTree Profiles that use this source]]

How to Show Wiki-Text in a Free-Space Page

Any Wiki-Text used in a Free-Space page will be interpreted as Wiki Syntax and will not be visible when people read the Free-Space page. When supplying "copy-and-paste" text for others to see that includes Wiki-Text, you must bracket the text within <nowiki>.

<nowiki>put the Wiki Syntax here</nowiki>

It may be best to learn by example. Here is a simple example:

• Bethany_Sketches_and_Records

Here is a more complex example:

• The New England Historical & Genealogical Register

Look at the Edit Tab for these two examples to see how they were created.

Footnotes

1. ↑ Every source in WikiTree will show up in normal Google searches. This is true for everyone, even if they never heard of WikiTree.