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Slave Deed
Given that they are so similar, perhaps my choice of which one to use will be based on the "icon" for the Item type. For example, the book section type looks like an open book. Similar to looking at deed books or registers. The Document type would be individual certificates and/or documents. I have been using the Film type for the microfilms were I have scanned most if not the entire roll. I have also used TV for webinars and have used Presentation for conferences. Several of these choices were made based on the icon and not the format. It is nice to know that the output is not that different.
Ann - a most interesting perspective choosing an item type based on the icon it displays in the middle pane. Very interesting "talking" to you. It is helping me a lot. Thanks.
Fred - you are welcome.
I think the Item Type we choose will sometimes be shaped by the format in which we find the record. If it's in a clerk's book, digitized on Ancestry.com, you'll need something different than if it's like I found mine--photocopies of the original bills of sale, gathered in a manila folder at the state archives. I think we'll do ourselves the most good if, rather than trying to determine how to classify a slave bill of sale, we try to distinguish how we handle things that are in various derivative states.
Also, we might want to consider in some cases that a collection of items is the source, and the actual detail of one item in the collection is treated as citation detail. Let's take the folder I mentioned. There were a lot of bills in the folder. I could make one Zotero entry for the folder, then as I cite something, get that major citation and insert the detail--who bought or sold whom to Reuben Bennett for how much.
This is where the art comes in, truly!
Donna B. - That is similar to the approach I took when setting up how I was going to do citations in FTM. I use the "clumping method." I don't use any of FTM's templates except the free form. With the exception of census records my "Sources" are clumped together by location and type and the citation detail becomes the entire citation. In my reference notes for the clumped citations the source is removed.
Just to get information into Zotero quickly I have been copying and pasting my citations from FTM into a note in Zotero.
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So much to learn here. I think there's a strong argument for doing all you can to get the citation material collected and into a database (Zoter0) while you're working with the record, but there's an equally strong argument to not spend tons of time working the nuances of the citations in EE format because it is quite complex (thorough, but complex). I like Ann's method.
I know Zotero is a citation manager developed to quickly import citation information from a source specifically electronic sources and then output that citation into an article, document or dissertation in the appropriate style.
Because EE style is complex I am not sure the ability of Zotero to output a properly formatted citation in EE style without spending a lot of time playing with it both on the front end and on the back end is really necessary as long as I get all the details I need. So far it seems I am getting all the details with the connector.
Since I write up my research in a Scrivener and Zotero can't export a citation directly to Scrivener at least not yet. Writing the citation in a note is not too much of a compromise.
Using the clumping method in FTM the copy/paste will work when adding to FTM. Plus I think we would get an EE style formate for Zotero well before we ever got the ability to export directly to FTM. 🙂 So I will always be using copy/paste to get a citation into FTM.
The vast majority of my citations are already written in EE style and in FTM. This makes it easy to copy/paste into Zotero. For my mom's side of the family, there are 22,006 source citations in FTM. I am guessing at least 60% of these have been written in EE. For my dad's side, there are 10,024 source citations the majority of which still need to be reformated and sources fixed.
The downside of not using Zotero to automatically format citations is I will still need to manually write the citation but the ability to use Zotero as a card catologue and a place to put everything far outweighs the inability of it to create an EE style citation and export it.
I think Donna B. mentioned something about Zotero not reformating correctly when you used more than one citation type in a document. ie exporting a citation from Zotero and creating one manually would not work in the renumbering of the citations. Donna B. did I understand that correctly?
If someone writes up their research in a document that is able to accept an exported Zotero citation then it might be worth the time to find the item type that gets you the closest to EE.
I'm in full agreement with you both. We'll make ourselves crazy trying to mimic pure EE. I think the essential questions for any citation are...can I find my way back to this, can someone else find their way to it, and if no one can get to it, can they assess the value of the source from this citation?
Then, if you're working with a publisher who demands pristine EE, you worry about perfecting the citations on the back end. I worked with a book publisher for some years, and our editors were OK with an author deciding to veer away from a standard, so long as the veering made sense and was done consistently.
I think that's going to be my standard--make sense and be consistent.
Donna B. So far I am not seeing where the connector is not getting the essentials. Since you have been using it for a lot longer have you run across situations where the connector didn't give you the essentials?
