Sign up for Genealogy Pointers »

Ancestry.com is the largest and most widely used genealogy site on the Internet. As an Ancestry.com user yourself, you’ve looked at databases with billions of names, so now you want to be sure you can get back to a specific record or lead others to the same record; and you need to identify your sources, to verify and cross-check them for accuracy, using the correct citations to Ancestry’s online databases and images.

Help is at hand with Elizabeth Mills’s fabulous new QuickSheet, which provides rules and models for citing the myriad databases and images you use on Ancestry.com. With this new QuickSheet, you’ll know instantly how to cite databases that include census records, vital records, passenger lists, city directories, and family trees; and how to cite images that include manuscripts, maps, newspapers, and online books and articles. In QuickSheet: Citing Ancestry.com Databases & Images you’ll find the standards you need for the correct citation of Ancestry sources, as well as help in judging the reliability of those sources.

For most Ancestry.com sources, sample citations are shown here in three styles: Source List Entry, Full Reference Note, and Short Reference Note, each showing you how to deal with author/creator, title, website, URL, date accessed, item type, source of sources, and so forth. Arranged in tabular format under each of these headings, the sample citations are easy to follow and can be applied to your specific needs in citing your sources.

Convenient for desktop use at home or in the library, the new QuickSheet, like its companion, QuickSheet: Citing Online Historical Resources Evidence! Style, is a heavily laminated sheet, folded to form a standard 8½” x 11” folder, and is designed for constant use.