Library Page - With Citation Format

Question

I love Kitty's Library.  I decided to make my life easier (and maybe yours?) by adding the citation format right with the book listing on her library page: [http://www.wikitree.com/index.php?title=Space:Kitty%27s_Library&public=1 Kitty's Library].  That way I could find the book and get the corrrect citation at the same place, so I don't have to reinvent the wheel every time. With Kitty's permission, I experimented.

If you scroll down to Connecticut, you will see that there is a place to click to get the citation for that source.  This was only a test, so it only goes for Connecticut for now and I only did it for books available free online.

• What do you think about it?  I used Jillaine's reference book citation format. 
• Is it something that is helpful? 
• Should it be expanded?
• Should we have a dropdown box to make pages like sources/library listings like this easier to find?

Answer 1

I have been adding the citation format as part of the free-space profile for the source. here is an example: http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:A_Genealogical_Dictionary_of_the_First_Settlers_of_New_England

This has been so useful that I now put all these citations examples into one local file on my computer. This makes them easy to find and easy to cut-and-paste into the profile being edited. (Actually, this file is here: http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:Sources-1, but you have to edit the file to see what I have in my local file. The file is private, so that is not possible.)

Comments

Rick thank you so much for your example of citation format.  Your page is fanstastic; it opened my eyes to new ways to code Wiki text markup; opened my eyes to resources I didn't know about; showed me a way of creating a citation archive that is entirely new to me.

I started my own free space page of citations I use frequently, and added links into the citations as an after thought (nearly finished with that) and now you have raised my awareness to a whole new level of competence - just when I began to think the steep learning curve on writing Wiki text was flattening out.

Not a complaint - I love the way WikiTree keeps challenging me to set new goals by showing me what is possible. Thank you Rick!!

Answer 2

Thanks for your developments on Kitty's Library, Vic!  I added a bunch of additional entries yesterday from Philip Smith(?), but I don't think any were in Connecticut.  Thanks again.  

Answer 3

Great this ...didn´t  now it excisted ....very helpfull looking for ancestors and stuff abroad (I´m from Holland )...scrolled down to Connecticut  and think it ´s ok this way ...as for me ..no expantion needed works fine this way . Look up most things online ,but maybe people who want to look up things in books ,it´s very helpfull I guess .

The dropdown box would be ok though .

If you like I could send you some links for online sources for genealogical research from Holland ??

If you want me to just say so and I´ll send them

Thnx for making our lives so much easier

Comments

Yes, Bea, I would love to have a "Holland" section. Please send me your online links.

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Oh wow , did this space grow since I last visited ! Would you like a Hungary section too ?

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Ok I´ll gather all links I can find and send them ...so links are coming your way

Greetings ,Bea

Answer 4

Vic,

I think what you have done is great. I think that it is very helpful. The dropdown box idea sounds great; hopefully someone can comment on the technical feasability. I think expanding it is a great idea once the citation template is 'finalized'; if the cart goes before the horse, a lot of wasted effort could ensue if changes are made to the template.

As something related to the topic but more directed at citation templates, I do hope a wikitree citation template (whether Jillaine's great work or some other yet-to-be-made template) will become more standardized with the Wikipedia citation format. Some online catalogs provide pre-formatted citations and are starting to offer them in Wikipedia format; by riding on wikipedia's coattails we could reduce alot of duplicated effort.

For example the book you have included as "Cutter 4" http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:Citation_Format_for_Online_Books#Cutter4 can be accessed through openlibrary.org (which works closely with archive.org) and will with one click give a wikipedia citation like this:

{{Citation
    |publisher = Lewis historical publishing company
    |publication-place = New York
    |title = Genealogical and family history of the state of Connecticut
    |url = http://openlibrary.org/books/OL6535070M/Genealogical_and_family_history_of_the_state_of_Connecticut
    |author = William Richard Cutter
    |publication-date = 1911
    |oclc = 1084538
    }}

Comments

Rob,

I didn't intend to proceed further until the citation formating guidelines are complete. This was just an experiment to test the usefulness and feasiblilty of having the citation format readily available to folks.

Thanks for the info on the citation link at Open Library.  I hadn't noticed it before.  I will say that I used Internet Archive or Google Books because I want to see the original.  Open Lirary, which links to Internet Archive, has digital copies, and many times these are practically undecypherable. However, if I used the Open Library citation formation and just inserted a different URL link would make life easier.

Do we know if Open Library conforms to Eliz. S. Mills' formatting guidelines?

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I am not sure what you mean by conforming to EE guidelines... The template we build handles the formatting of the displayed citation.

For example, pasting the citation I posted above into a profile and changing the word 'citation' to 'Reference book' results in a display of:

William Richard Cutter, Genealogical and family history of the state of Connecticut ({{{pub-place}}}: Lewis historical publishing company, {{{pub-year}}}), {{{page}}}.

{{{quote}}}

 

As you can, see the order it is displayed in is based on the template, not on the order in which the variables are defined (i.e. Author and Publisher). Some publishing information is not displayed because the variable name is different (i.e. publication-date vs pub-date). And we would still have to add the specific page reference or other record identifier and any transcriptions.

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Thanks Rob.  I didn't understand how templates work.  As I understand it, it isn't the order in which you put things, as long as you put them with the correct description.  Then, it is the name of the template that determines what goes where.

Answer 5

Yes, Maggie, I would love to add your Hungarian resources. I did like that Bea's many Holland links were consolidated so that I only had to add four Holland links to the Library. So consolidation is a good thing if you have a lot of online resource links.  Thank you!