Quote from Donna Cox Baker on May 25, 2019, 3:36 am

I have found several ways to handle public records (or microfilms of them) that Ancestry (or another company) has digitized. CMOS doesn't really address this, that I can see. EE treats the database like a book, with the specific record treated as detail. The citation provided by Ancestry.com for the Georgia death records sets up a similar format, like this:

Ancestry.com. Georgia, Deaths Index, 1914-1940 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011.

Using a Book Item Type with Notes Beneath

I set this up like the first image below.

Then, I added a note beneath which captures the specific detail. Since there might be many records under the book record, I've put the last name first, looking like the second image.

While this is the cleanest-looking record in Zotero, and will create the bibliography exactly as you want it, here are some limitations:

• The list of notes beneath the book record may get very long.
• If you want to attach images of the records from the database, they will not be attached to the detail note.
• If you are using the Word add-on to cite the source in a Word document, you will only be able to draw up the major record. You will need to type in the detail material from your notes.

Using a Book Section Item Type for every citation

Going with a "many" records approach, you can use the Book Section Item Type, putting the detail in as the section title and setting the rest up, pretty much as the book above. Mine looks like the third image below.

This allows you to add an attachment of the record image to your Zotero record and in the Word add-on, to find your record and pull it in with the detail embedded.

The bad part is the fact that you have to repeat the book information over and over.

A blended approach

I prefer to blend the two, by doing this. 

• Create the general book record for the database as a whole.
• For each individual public record, create a Book Section that has the detail information in the section title, and in the book title field, has the book title with "(see orig)" after it. 
• Leave all else blank

See the fourth image.

This way, I put the book detail in only once, but am able to have the control of multiple records in Zotero.

The catch is that there will be some cleanup, when draw the citation information in to Word with the add-on. But I think it can be done with some easy search-and-replace work, and it's worth the trouble.