Do you want an easy way to manage your genealogy source
citations? Well, Roots Magic has an easy tool called the
Source Citations templates. They're fairly easy to use but
stick around because later in this video, I will show you how
you can copy your citation and use it multiple times for
multiple people for multiple events. There are several
places where you can keep track of your source citations in
Roots Magic. The first one is when you click on an individual
profile you come to any of the facts the name the marriage the
parents or a birth bag if you see this little pencil that's
the source and then over on the right side of the window you're
going to see your different sources so there's a picture
there's a family bible there's a citation from a death
certificate some public records so there's where you can keep
track of your citation we'll come back to adding citations
in a minute the other location for citations is using the side
tab over here. If you click on sources, you're going to see a
master list of all of the sources that you have. Now that
you know where the source citations are found, let's talk
about how to create a new source using a new template.
And in this case, I am getting the source from the World War
two draft cards for young men over on Ancestry. So my new
event is that he's a residing in Columbus in nineteen
forty-four. So over on Roots Magic, I am going to create a
new event because I don't have a residence in 1944. So click
on the plus button. Now I'm going to type residence. And
I'm going to click on residence and I'm going to click on okay
and if you notice way down here at the bottom there is a new
entry for residents and it will get sorted once I put some
details over here on the right so I have taken the information
that was on this document the date the place I looked at the
original image and it had a specific street address so I
put that in and then I added a few more details which was that
he was working at this company or so now what we need to do is
click okay so you can see that I have the residence
information but I don't have the little pencil icon there on
the right so I'm going to click on that and I'm going to click
add source citation a window pops up and all of the sources
that you've used before are listed here but I haven't
created one for the World War one draft registration to
double check I can click in this box right here and type
World War. I'm just going to do this for now and you could see
I have draft for 1942, but I don't have this young men's
registration so I'm going to create a new one. To do that, I
come over here to add new source and I can go ahead and
type in draft on the right side. Draft. Template list will
be filtered to template names that have what you'd search for
it. So, I'm going to go ahead and click on draft
registration. Now, do you see this gibberish right here?
Okay? This is letting you know where this source template
comes from. So, EE is for evidence explained. It gives
you the reference number and the page number and AQS is from
ancestry quicksheet. So, if you're trying to create all
evidence explained citations, then, this is going to be the
one you want to choose. Go ahead and click next. After
selecting the template that fits your needs, you can now
copy the information from your source either digitally or for
a hard copy source and put them into the fields in the template
and let's Roots Magic do its magic. So, source name is not
going to show up in the actual citation but it's for you to be
able to find the citations in the future. So, I'm going to
have it be very similar to what is already in the database and
I'm going to change nineteen 42 to young men draft registration
just so that it reminds me which one we are utilizing so
now I need the title of the database I don't like to type
into the fields if there is a option to copy and paste
because you can introduce errors into your databases in
your citation so go ahead and copy and paste the title into
the database title now the format we're going to go ahead
and leave this it's a digital images if it's something else
then we can go ahead and switch it there creator of the
website. I'm going to skip this because it's going to introduce
redundancy into the citation but the title of the website is
Ancestry. com. Ancestry. com is the URL. Should you include
HTTP, HTTPS, WWW in your URL address? I'm at the opinion
that no because in twenty twenty-two, if you type in it
address without the HTTP, HTTPS, or W WWW. you will be
taken to that website. So leave it off. It's just wasted space.
So now we need the title of the records or the subtitle. This
database doesn't necessarily have a title or subtitle. There
is if you go to ancestry this source and it tells you the
draft registration cards for Ohio the records of the
selective service. I'm going to actually put that in a
different location. So let's go back to Roots Magic and for
Now, I'm just going to skip this source text, comments, and
reference. Click on next and you can see here that the
master source that we created is truncated and now we have
the citation. There are two sections to the source citation
template. The master source which you will use again and
again for the same type of source such as the 1850 census.
Then there is the citation details and this pertains to
the specific citation within that Master Source. So, William
in the 1850 census. That would be in the source citation
template and it only pertains to that specific entry. If
you're still confused, ask questions in the comments
below. Alright, so the citation name, this is going to be for
you to know which person you are actually pull creating the
citation for. So, I'm going to actually put Robert's name. So,
Robert P Geisler, senior There's a number of different
words that you can use to say that you looked at a record and
how you looked at it. I usually just leave the default which is
access. You can see access is right here. It'll show up even
if you don't put anything there. So, I'm just going to
leave it blank. Now, I need to put a date in which I looked at
this and now, I need to talk about my specific person of
interest. So, for me, I looked at Robert Paul Geisler So now
we have a decision to make because we want identifying
pieces of information other than Robert Paulge so in case
there's a second one. So for me the most useful piece of
information is this birth date. I could go in here and look for
a record number. There is the order number we could use that.
There's a serial number we can use that. Uh whichever you
prefer. I'm just going to go ahead and use his birth date.
Now this database comes from another database since it's
ancestry and they actually came from a different record
collection. It comes from the National Archives So, this is
when I'm going to go ahead and grab this information right
here and do a copy and paste and I'm going to leverage
ancestry's use of that citation. So, they cited their
source and I'm just going to copy the source just like that.
I'm going to go ahead and click okay and this saves it. Now, I
can go back and do something that is really neat. If you'll
notice, this is italicized in the source citation over on
ancestor as well as this other section but when I copied and
pasted the citation into Roots Magic you don't see draft
registration cards italicized well in Roots Magic Aids you
can customize that this is really neat feature so click on
customize and when the windows pops up you can come into the
citation that they've created and find draft registration
card for Ohio highlight it, and mark it as a telesized. Record
group, records of the selective service, I can itelicize that.
You can bold something, underline it, whatever you want
to because maybe you want to have a URLs with an underscore
or underline, you can do that whichever you want. Make sure
that you go down and you save it and now, you can see that
there's italicizing in the source citation and there's
also the underline. When we go back to the record, we see that
there is self reporting by Robert Geisler. He signed his
name and he said his date of birth was 822 nineteen 26. This
is secondary information. Sure, Robert was there when he was
born. However, he wasn't aware of what the date was. So, with
parents told him where he was born. Therefore, that makes it
secondary information. Now, while we are talking about
secondary information, I like to attach one source to each
facts that it documents. So, in this case, this record talks
about a birth, a location where he's living in 1946 and then it
actually gives you next to the kin so I would attach it there
as well. There's two ways to do this. The first way is to click
on the citation click on the little copy button to memorize
the citation then go to the pencil icon next to the fact
that you're trying to add the citation to and then you can
paste the citation. Now, you're going to be asked, point to the
same copy of the citation or make a copy of the memorized
citation to point to that copy. Use reuse citations. If you
don't want to customize your sources to the multiple places
that you're going to place it, use the paste a copy when
you're going to customize it. So, let's say you have a census
record and one citation is going to say John in the
household of William and then you want to use most of that
same content again but you wanted to say it is Mary in the
household of William, that is when you use the second option.
If you have any more questions, you know what to do. Put them
in the comments. So, I'm in the sources for the birth and if I
scroll down, I'm going to see the one I made a copy of and if
I click this arrow right here because I made this as a paste
a copy, what I can now do is do information secondary source it
is an original source and then the evidence it directly
answers the question of when his birth took place mark the
check box and now I have this citation from the template
attached to the birth event right here so when I click on
this residence information I see the source that I created
earlier I can click on that arrow and I can go and select
the source quality as it applies to the residence fact
so this is original information it's primary because Robert
self purported that he lived at this location on this state
he's that is his primary information he knows where he's
living on this date of course he could line but we're
going to go ahead and we're going to go back and we're
going to say he had the primary information and it directly
answers the question of where was he living on on the 22nd of
August 1944. Be sure to check out our other Roots Match
videos that you should watch next by clicking right up here
and if you want something new, check out this video right
here. A Source Source Citations