How to document a Bible that is not copyrighted to myself?

Question

A cousin through my maternal grandparents has in their private tree a scanned copy of my maternal grandfather's family bible. It has the name dates and places for his and his sibling's births in Liverpool, England.

Since this item belongs to my cousin (since he is the owner the image, I assume the copyright belongs to him), I decided to place a transcription of the item on my maternal grandfather's page.  I have placed the transcription temporarily in the "Memories" section of the page. 

My question is  where exactly this information should be placed and how should I document the source. Thank you in advance

Answer 1

Ownership of an item doesn't convey copyright. The copyright of the Bible would have been to the publishing house when they published that edition. What was written in the family record section technically would be copyrighted to whomever wrote it.

That being said, how you would cite it would be to cite the Bible like any other book if you still have the title page: exact title, publisher, publishing place, date of publication. Note the provenance of the Bible ("Mary Smith Jones was the original owner of this Bible. As of 14 November 2023, it was in the possession of John Jones, 123 Main St., Anywhere, USA.") and anything else that could be useful in identifying it or evaluating it later. ("The writing on the 'Births' page is faded and difficult to read.")