So, just to be clear Tony, you'd advocate citing the Parish Register itself (the P148/x/y item stored at the CRO) rather than the copy of the parish register which is item zz on LDS microfilm MMM ? Mark Scott Families of interest: Daw, Roberts, & Werry, St. Mewan & St. Austell areas On Sat, Aug 14, 2010 at 2:00 AM, Tony Pollard <tony@hsservices.com.au> wrote: > Surely if you source the document, page, etc. then that is the source > document, not the image. I have copies of some these images as > photocopies of the originals, obviously they are the same. > > The source is the actual document, not the image. > > Hope this helps > > Tony >

My I suggest that both sources (and any others- even if these only act as a confirmation) sources are cited. Perhaps in order of veracity. Thus the first citation would be the location and ref. identification of the actual original document (perhaps a CRO ref.). The second citation would be the ref. details of the source from which you obtained that 'transcription' or viewed a copy of that document (in this case a Family Search ref.). There is some actual wonderful information being posted on various web sites that enables us to search parish registers, census records, GRO etc. but because sources are not always set out it is sometimes difficult to work out whether the effort is based upon an individuals own effort at transcribing the original document (sometimes not even citing which document was used - eg was it Bishops transcript of the original Parish Record? let alone the location of the document or the copy used for the transcribing). With all the problems this involves or whether the the results are from putting into the database a transcribed copy of the work of some one else (say Phillimore or other well known publication, or merely lifted from another database found on the web) there will probably always be mistakes. So the original document remains top of the pile. May I suggest a copy of the original document (with a note of where it was obtained from) must remain at the top of sources quoted and available on our family files. Recently, many original documents have become avaliable for viewing (and for saving on our own computers) both on pay for view sites (eg Ancestery) or for free (eg FreeBMD). Those on FamilySearch are another leap forward. Perhaps, as the technology developes, this will become a positive whirlwind of sources. Mike, Redruth.