Family Historian User Group

General Usage, I suggest - researching Drouin is only a minor aspect...???

LornaCraig wrote:... I'd go further and say that (under my personal approach) even Ancestry is not the repository but part of the publication process, literally making the information accessible to the public. ...

Definitely part of the publication process for me too.

LornaCraig wrote:... I regard the physical location of the original archived document as the repository, so the Catholic churches are the repositories of the original sources and the court houses are repositories of the copies which were made at the time or soon after the event.

I went down that route at one time but I began to feel it problematic because it got so difficult to work out where the originals are held. For instance, where's the original of England & Wales' 1939 Register? I believe that it remains with the NHS because TNA only accessioned a digital version. Digital-only accessioning is going to occur more and more. Indeed, even simpler than that - what's the repository for the English & Welsh censuses? Some of them are down a salt-mine just up the road from me, but I've no idea which? I suppose I could use "TNA" as the repository because that's the controlling mind, but that seems to drift even further from the "Where is it?" idea. So my internet sources generally have the web-site name in both publication data and repository. Possibly pointless duplication...

The important thing, which I think Lorna and I agree on, is that it's important to record the "source of the source". I happen to generally put it into the publication data as the last element there, usually preceded by "citing ...".

The important thing for me is that citations are readable so I tend to dislike citations of the format "XX, YY, ZZ" where you get no clue just what XX, YY and ZZ are.

For me, if I viewed something at Ancestry that was derived from something elsewhere, then the repository for what I viewed (the images/database) is Ancestry, not the repository for the source of the source.

As it happens, I have the used the Drouin collection but on their own website, and have cited it as e.g.

"Drouin Collection Records", images online, Quebec Records (Drouin Institute) (https://www.genealogiequebec.com: accessed 31 October 2016), marriage at St George's Anglican Church 6 August 1925 between Lewis Alfred William Wheatley and Hettie Wright (image d1p_1146d1087) citing St' George's (Montreal) Parish Registers.

As I haven't seen the original PRs, wherever they are held is NOT the repository for what I saw.

My perspective on the Drouin discussion is that there are three items that need to be defined - repository, source, citation. Because Gabriel Drouin actually photographed the church/court records and later digitized them, they are a repository the others are the Greffe's (courts) and the individual churches. If you were accessing those records directly then they would be the repository. Since all of my records come from Drouin (either through genealogieQuebec.com, or Ancestry) they have to be the repository. The source is where I found and recorded the information - Ancestry or genealogieQuebec. I have used both but I prefer the latter. If you take the example posted by colevalleygirl and look at the "image d1p_1146d1087" which comes from genealogieQuebec, you can use that same image number in an Ancestry URL to find the same record (e.g. https://www.ancestry.ca/interactive/1091/d1p_1146d1087). I know for a fact that all images related to the Drouin collection come from Drouin. So, if you use Drouin, cite genealogieQuebec as the source, or if you use Ancestry, cite Ancestry as the source adding Citing the Drouin Collection or words to that effect. Finally, the citation is the data you glean from the record - no discussion there. I tried this formula in FH and here is what I consider to be an adequate citation for an event (in this case a baptism):

Gabriel Drouin, "Institut généalogique Drouin". Saint-Joseph, Maskinongé, Maskinongé, Québec, Canada. Cit. Date: 26 February 1809. Assessment: Primary evidence.
Text From Source: Agathe Maçon, Baptismal act, folio 4 recto, Civil Vital Register for 1809, Greffe de Trois-Rivières.
Provides evidence of the birth and baptism of Agathe Maçon (aka Masson) and parties associated with the event. Her parents
were identified as Joseph Maçon (aka Masson), a farmer, and Elizabeth Dupuit (aka Dupuis), all from Maskinongé. (Web:
https://www.genealogiequebec.com/Member ... 580800.jpg : accessed: 6 Apr 2019).
(the presentation as a cited work sucks, but all of the necessary information is there to allow you to find the record)

And this is the repository for the Bibliography
Drouin Collection, Institut Généalogique Drouin, 2855 Belcourt, Longueuil, Longueuil, Québec, Canada, J4M 2B2, 514 400
3961.

One final question - is the "Cit. Date" the date the citation was created or a date from the actual record - in this case the date of baptism. From my point of view it would be better placed in the "Text Fron Source:" line after baptismal act.

I believe that most people will use the citation date to mean when the source document was created - in this case the date of baptism. Feel free to omit it in favour of a date in what you are putting in the "Text from Source".