Citing Those Incomplete City Directories on Ancestry.com

Our recent post, “In the Beginning Was Page 50,” got me to thinking:

How would I cite an entry from that directory?

There is an entry for my uncle that directory on what is referred to as Ancestry.com‘s image 55 out of 633:

1955-uncle-Alvin

The image indicated it was page 45 of the actual book. Ancestry.com indicated it was from the 1955 Peoria [Illinois] City Directory. There are entries for my uncle on:

  • book page 45, Ancestry.com image 55 (above image)
  • book page 721, Ancestry.com image 450–this is the apparent residential entry for Alvin Ufkes which includes the entry “Ufkes, Alvin J. (Rose M.; Heyle Royster & Velke) h5422 Isabell av (RT)”

Ancestry.com‘s search indicated that there were three entries for an Alvin Ufkes in the 1955 Peoria directory, but these were the only two located.

How to Cite?

Crafting a citation for these two entries is the problem.

The title page with author, date, and other biographical information appears to be missing from Ancestry.com‘s publication of this data. My citation will need to indicate that I’m using a database on Ancestry.com that has published under the title of “Peoria Illinois 1955 directory.”

Typically when one cites digital renderings of published materials, there is bibliographic information regarding the “original” date  and place of publication along with information regarding the online location of the reproduced version of the material. Usually that online publication includes a copy of the title page and other “original” publication information.

But that’s not there in this case.

We’ll have a later post with a discussion of the citation format for this particular item.

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