Source and citations for GRO certificates.

[ACF98]

Hi, I'm wanting to start uploading some of the birth and death certificates I've purchased from GRO onto Ancestry. I'm unsure what I should input in the source and citation boxes. I would love if someone could give me an example so I can visualise it better.

[trystan]

Hopefully somebody will be able to help you with your enquiry.

[confusion]

ACF98:
I'm wanting to start uploading some of the birth and death certificates I've purchased from GRO onto Ancestry

First and foremost you should read the T&C's before deciding to upload anything to any website.
Copyright subsists in ALL BMD's issued less than 75years by the GRO.

There is nothing stopping you TRANSCRIBING the details from these BMD's into another document and uploading those if you wish.

Good luck with your project.

Jim

[KGarrad]

I have never, in over 40 years research, bothered with any citations or sources!

Source is surely GRO?
Title is GRO BMD certificates?
Author is GRO?
Publisher is GRO?

Call Number? What on earth is that?!

[Tickettyboo]

I've seen a good few trees on Ancestry where the tree owner has the specific GRO index entry as the source.

Even if is a tree that only has a couple of hundred people on it, that would create a huge list of sources - each of which is a one off.

I'd create a Source as e.g. GRO England & Wales Births

No idea about the other fields, but I'd probably just leave them blank.

That is then the source I would choose for all Birth certs on the tree from the England & Wales GRO

and then for each individual cert, for the Citation I'd use the GRO Index details  that relate to the cert e.g. Births Q4 1872 Newcastle upon Tyne 10b 452 mmn BLOGGS

No idea if that's the correct method, but it makes sense to me :-)

Boo

[JohninSussex]

Surely the purpose of citations is first to convince another researcher that you have genuine information;  and second to give a reference where that reader can see the same document.

If it's a document that isn't published, the second doesn't apply.  So I agree, give the data found in the GRO index or on FreeBMD, and add something like "certificate held by me" .
If of course you don't just decide to ignore that citation thing altogether.

[AntonyMMM]

I generally stick to the name - then Quarter, Year, Reg District Vol and page. That is sufficient to find the entry should I need to again  - you have the certificate, so that should suffice.

First and foremost you should read the T&C's before deciding to upload anything to any website.
Copyright subsists in ALL BMD's issued less than 75years by the GRO.

BMD certificates are not, nor ever have been, copyright. The layout is subject to crown copyright, but not the certificates themselves, nor the data on it and GRO (with the help of TNA) publish a very helpful guide on the copying (which is OK - so long as there is not attempt to use them as genuine certified copies) and sharing/uploading certificates to websites .

If they relate to living individuals then there may be data protection issues to consider ( although as they are public records, available to anyone under statute, some may argue otherwise).

.....of course individual websites may have their own policies which don't allow them to be uploaded.

https://cdn.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documents/information-management/reproduction-of-birth-death-marriage-certificates.pdf

[jmjburton]

I followed the "First Reference Note example in Evidence Explained, 3rd edition by Elizabeth Shown Mills found on p.475. I was looking to cite my great-grandfather's birth certificate. Rather than use Ancestry's source fields, which frankly are confusing and not helpful, I composed the citation freeform and then pasted it into the Description field of the birth fact (see attachment). I hope this is helpful.

[Glen in Tinsel Kni]

It's actually difficult to find a format Ancestry will accept and subsequently publish as a custom source to a tree let alone one that is used widely by others. It's unlikely that two trees use  the same standardised format so trying to create one soon becomes a chore with little benefit.

Easiest way I've found is to copy and paste the GRO ref from the gov.uk website into the birth or death fact with the abbreviation 'mmn' prior to th maiden name of the mother, If needed I'll include any mention of a variant spelling of the name or maiden name. If the cert is available I may it as media to that fact in order to make it easy to find.

Granted it isn't a 'source' in the strictest sense but at a glance I can see which I have or haven't done and it does show tree viewers some effort has been made to verify the entry.