Okay, genealogy friends, I need some advice on how best to cite a digital image of a newspaper article obtained through a library-access-only database, such as ProQuest or NewsBank. By this, I mean you either have to go to the library and use their computers (or network) to access the information, or if available, you can do it from home with your library card. I also mean that these are databases that are not available to the general public in other ways (in other words, I cannot purchase a subscription to the database as an individual consumer like I can with say, Ancestry).
The biggest issue is citing the “where accessed” portion of the recommended citation. On page 809 of Evidence Explained (Mills, 2007), the recommendation for a citation for a digital image of a newspaper obtained online is:
[author], “[article title],” [newspaper title], [issue date], p. [page number], col. [column number]; digital images, [website title] ([website URL] : accessed [date]), [collection title].
Therefore, a citation for a digital newspaper article obtained via GenealogyBank would look like this:
“Miss Marjorie Brunner,” Rockford Register-Republic, 30 June 1938, p. 4, col. 7; digital images, GenealogyBank (http://genealogybank.com : accessed 22 November 2011), Historical Newspapers.
Simple enough. But what about the library-access-only databases? What do you put in for the website title and website URL? Here’s an example of how I’ve addressed it for years:
“Death in Fall From Trolley Held Accident,” Chicago Tribune, 20 March 1946, p. 19; digital images, ProQuest (library subscription : accessed August 21, 2010), Historical Chicago Tribune.
I enter ProQuest to identify the entity servicing the database I used, which seems fair. Since there really is no website URL, I use the phrase “library subscription” instead and still include an access date. And I do include the collection title. I feel that anyone not familiar with ProQuest (or NewsBank, or others) can do a quick Google search, visit the company’s website and learn that the company offers various databases to libraries, not individuals. Just like any other source, it would be up the the person to figure out where they might go to find said database.
To me, this seems sufficient, but is this the appropriate way to handle this particular situation? I’d really like others to chime in on how they handle this type of citation. Please leave a comment here on the blog (not on Facebook, G+, or Twitter) so others can benefit from the dialog associated with this post.
Image courtesy of Master isolated images at FreeDigitalPhotos.net.
I think the way you’ve done it works fine in that it gives all necessary information for someone else to find the source you have used.
In Chicago/Turabian citation format you would provide a citation as if for the original print source and then add the information for accessing the digital format. Here’s a sample from the short Turabian guide on the University of Chicago Press website:
2. Anastacia Kurylo, “Linsanity: The Construction of (Asian) Identity in an Online New York Knicks Basketball Forum,” China Media Research 8, no. 4 (October 2012): 16, accessed March 9, 2013, Academic OneFile.
I think that is the most common sense approach to it. You’ve told them how they could find it with the library subscription OR without it (by giving all the newspaper information).
The only thing that I would change is that it should be ProQuest LLC Historical Chicago Tribune, because technically Proquest LLC is the owner and the database itself is the Trib, and that information might be lost if its hanging off the end like that.
For school in APA format I have to list the results like this if this helps!
“Author’s last name, First and Middle Initials. (date). Title of the article. Title of the journal or magazine, volume number(issue number), page numbers. Retrieved from name of the database and web address of article.”
Nice challenge 🙂
Which Proquest database did you use? Was it the Historical Chicago Tribune? If so, I would quote the exact database name and treat Proquest as the publisher e.g.
“Death in Fall From Trolley Held Accident,” Chicago Tribune, 20 March 1946, p. 19; “Historical Chicago Tribune,” database and digital images via library subscription (Proquest: accessed August 21, 2010)
This is a good point (also mentioned by Concetta) and personally, I do not like the placement of the collection name hanging at the end without quotes. It’s completely the opposite for other databases with digital images, where the database title is in quotes first, followed by the website title and so on. I wonder why it’s different? Agh….more to think about 🙂
Julie, I think you also need to add the name and location of the library as not all libraries have the same databases. I found a few examples that might help:
http://r.search.yahoo.com/_ylt=A0LEV1yMmqtTOXQAy3VXNyoA;_ylu=X3oDMTEzN3Bic2hhBHNlYwNzcgRwb3MDNARjb2xvA2JmMQR2dGlkA1ZJUDQ2NF8x/RV=2/RE=1403783949/RO=10/RU=http%3a%2f%2fliterature.proquestlearning.com%2fhelp_us%2fProQuest_Citation_Guide.pdf/RK=0/RS=fjQDyL2Bnb.okX7z5uRE3ESDF9A-
http://r.search.yahoo.com/_ylt=A0LEV1yMmqtTOXQAznVXNyoA;_ylu=X3oDMTEzYjc1ZWNrBHNlYwNzcgRwb3MDNgRjb2xvA2JmMQR2dGlkA1ZJUDQ2NF8x/RV=2/RE=1403783949/RO=10/RU=http%3a%2f%2fwww.columbia.edu%2fcu%2flweb%2feresources%2fdatabases%2f3262558.html/RK=0/RS=kR19OeE8EDMLr106aNflMC7Vz_U-
Julie I love seeing a question that helps me learn more. I was going to comment last night (looks fine to me) but wanted to sleep on it. Yvette (she is so smart about these things) brought up a good point. Thank you Judy for the links. I’ll be reading through the ProQuest Citation Guidelines.
Cathy, I tried following the links I provided and it does not appear to connect properly, so you may not be able to see them. You could try searching the document title. In short, the MLA Format was the most detailed, including the library’s name, etc. APA Format a little less and Turabian Format (as defined by the 15th Edition of the Chicago Manual of Style), the least. Relating to authoring an article, it would be helpful to know which format is preferred.
Judy, I was able to access both links before I replied. I saved the first, a pdf, to read later. The link is http://www.proquestk12.com/pic/pdfs/ProQuest_Citation_Guide.pdf if someone else wants to take a look.
I think that the way that you have it is good—for your personal notes or for a client report.
When it comes down to it, though, if you write an article with that citation in it, it will not likely be published in that form. It wouldn’t need to be.
Historic issues of the Chicago Tribune are available in many different places in several different formats. Why is the specific database that you used to access this article significant to your citation of the article and the use of the information the article contains? It isn’t—no more so than the library where you read that county history. For published sources, it is simply not particularly relevant.
My citation, if used in an article, would therefore be:
“Death in Fall From Trolley Held Accident,” Chicago Tribune, 20 March 1946, p. 19, col. [xx].
That, really, is the source that you are using. You may have (hypothetically) viewed the original newspaper, a microfilm edition, or an online edition on any number of websites, but the article does not change in any way among these different means of access.
I’m glad to see that someone else agrees with my way of thinking in terms of, why is some of the extra stuff included in some instances and not others. You’re right, we don’t include the library where we viewed a book (unless it’s a rare book or manuscript). I could have viewed the article in any one of several libraries, near and far, and would not include that info in my citation. So why must we do so because it was accessed online? I kind of thought it was simply to give credit or to serve as an additional finding aid. Ugh! It seems like we’ve been following a trend to include every last bit of information, but when it really comes down to it, I’ve noticed that many of the “big” publications are shortening citation to the bare minimum. This question was inspired because of a publication I am editing. I now think I have a solution. The author mentions in the beginning of the article the steps she took to do the research, which included viewing a newspaper title through one of these library subscriptions and even mentions which library she visited. I was actually going to put an editor’s note that the same batch of newspapers are available via GenealogyBank. So, I think I may do this, and then leave out the “digital image” info in the citations and cite only the article.
P.S. No column number because this database likes to crop out just the article, and while they do provide information at the top of the article, such as newspaper title, issue date, and page number, they do not include the darn column number! I guess I should have put “unknown” in the citation, but hey, I had only been doing genealogy for about two years at that point…just that fact that I had a citation at all is something to cheer about 😉
That’s a good point, Michael. You can find it many places, so you can just cite the article.
I think you are absolutely right, though, that it comes down to what the purpose of the citation is. In my case, my files are only for my own use, and I want to remember which databases I’ve already searched, so I use the longer citation. I think that’s a forgotten layer of citation, deciding which format serves what purpose.
You’ve given me some excellent thoughts to think about this week while I go researching.
Based on everyone’s feedback, this is what I’ve decided. First, for personal records, I agree that having the information of the repository is useful to me should I ever need to obtain the record again or want to quickly learn where I can access a particular resource for another project. Second, since this was also a question about how to handle this in a publication I edit, which I did not actually mention, but Michael kindly alluded to (thank you!), I decided to cite only the newspaper information. However, in the first citation, I added the following statement: “Digital images of all articles cited herein from [XYZ Newspaper] were accessed via a NewsBank database available through the [XYZ Library].”
Thanks to everyone for their thought-provoking comments. Very much appreciated!!
That works very well indeed!!