Crafting Citations from Images Found with FamilySearch Full-Text Search

This past Saturday, I attended the Board for the Certification Ed Fund presentation given by Judy G. Russell and Carolyn Ladd. The theme of the day was studying documents, creating citations, and learning the law to understand the documents’ meaning. It was a great day of learning.

I thought I would show how I gather the information when locating a document on FamilySearch’s full-text search. Crafting a citation is not straightforward. I have to go to several screens to gather the information needed.

Searching
Let’s start with finding a document on Full-text search. I always put the search in quotes in the keyword box. Once I get the returns, I then filter using the place first, down to the county level. If I still have too many hits, I’ll filter by the year, working through the decades.

Collecting Citation Information
The following image shows the second document from the returns list. From this view, I see the page number, 332. The deed actually begins on page 331, so I will want to go to that page when I collect the URL, as that is the beginning of the deed. So, the deed goes from pages 331 through 333. The next hit for the highlighted word Colby, is the beginning of another deed.

This deed is from Suffolk County, New York. The deeds begin in August 1899, but the collection name does not show beyond that. I can start the citation as I have collected the location, the grantor and grantee, the page numbers, and the image numbers. Here is the start of the citation:

Suffolk County, New York, deed, Lewis Rose & Annie Rose to Lydia N. Colby, trustee Thomas A. Colby, pp 331-33; imaged, FamilySearch, images 418-419.

The image below shows where I picked up the information.

Getting URL and Date
Of course, this is not a complete citation. I am missing some key elements. We’ll go back to the first page to collect the URL for the citation and see the date of the document, which is 21 September 1899.

Getting Image Group Number
Now this view is showing the transcription in the right-hand window. If we select Information, that panel will show us information we can use to fill in more of our citation. The Image Group Number (IGN) now shows in two places: at the upper left-hand corner under the collection title, and at the bottom right-hand corner. We’ll need that number to show the images are part of that digital film. The source of the source, where the originals are housed, is shown as the Suffolk County Court. The volume of the deed book shows as v. 483 from p 351 to the end. How can that be, when we’re looking at pages 331 through 333?

Click on the thumbnail button. Now we scroll back to the first page of the volume. Clicking on it to bring it to full size, we see the volume is 484. The title of the volume is Deeds.

Let’s add this information to our citation.

Suffolk County, New York, Deeds, v. 484: 331-33, Lewis Rose & Annie Rose to Lydia N. Colby, trustee Thomas A. Colby, 1899; imaged, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QSQ-G9WB-9995-B : accessed 9 Nov 2025), IGN 007192135, images 418-419; citing Suffolk County Clerk, Riverhead, New York.

Source of the Source
To be certain of the creator of the document, I go to the catalog entry for deeds in Suffolk County, New York. We see it is the County Clerk in Riverhead, Suffolk County, New York.

Conclusion
Full-text search has been a game-changer in locating records that indexes might not show. I used to start all my searches from the catalog, but I am locating more records using this new tool. There is one caveat: if the images are locked and only viewable at a FamilySearch Center or affiliate library, then they will not turn up at home. Checking the catalog is still a good tool to see if FamilySearch has records from the location you're interested in. 

The full-text tool, however, makes crafting citations a bit harder. I hope this tutorial will help you find all the elements you need to cite your documents.

#WebinarWednesday
This is a new series where I further investigate a topic after attending a webinar. This way, I am applying what I learned.

Copyright © 2011-2025 by Lisa S. Gorrell, My Trails into the Past. All Rights Reserved.