FamilySearch Wiki:WikiProject Civil Registration for Underserved Countries

Civil Registration Project for Underserved Countries

Project Leader: Amber Larsen
Purpose: The purpose of this project is to standardize the format and content of the Civil Registration pages. These pages are often very helpful for researching in underserved countries, as many of their records are not online/not available. Knowing about civil registration practices in their country can be important in tracing their ancestors.

• NOTE: These pages will be reviewed by a subject matter expert, so just do this project to the best of your abilities and they will add any additional information.
  

Task List: Task List
Example pages: Zambia Civil Registration, Seychelles Civil Registration, Benin Civil Registration

Instructions

Part 1: Format/Reformat Civil Registration Records Page

1. Navigate to the Civil Registration page for the country you signed up for in the Task List above.

2. Copy the following code, and paste it into the Civil Registration page below the breadcrumb and sidebar code.

==How to Find the Records==
===Offices to Contact===
==Historical Background==
==Coverage and Compliance==
==Information Recorded in the Records==
==References==

3. Occasionally, a country's Civil Registration page may already have content on the page before you paste in the code above. In that case, analyze the pre-existing content and sort it to where it best fits under a respective heading from the code above, deleting any old headings that don't fit the new template. (This step can sometimes be confusing... contact Amber if you have any questions)

• How to Find the Records: this heading should include content such as online record collections, record availability (such as date restrictions), any special instructions about how to navigate a record website to locate the records, etc. - in essence, anything the user may need to know in order to locate the records.
• Offices to Contact: if you know the office(s) one needs to contact in order to access original records, add that information under this subheading (see step 9 for the format to use)
• Historical Background: this heading should include any historic, geographic, or local information that affected civil registration/vital record keeping, such as colonization by another country, other military involvement, key dates in record keeping, any known record gaps, etc.
• Coverage and Compliance: include information such as the records start date, registration frequency, locations covered in the record keeping, populations covered, dates different areas complied with civil registration requirements, etc.
• Information Recorded in the Records: include what pieces of information are often recorded in the records, such as relationships, vital dates, places of residence, etc.

• NOTE: If there is already content on the page when you arrive, and the original content has a citation somewhere on the page that links to a Reference at the bottom, make sure to keep the original citation. As you divide up the original content and place it under the respective headings, copy and paste the original citation so it appears once under each heading the content was transferred to. For example: if you divide the original content and the contents end up under the "Historical Background", "Coverage and Compliance", and "Information Recorded in the Records" headings, make sure the original citation appears with the content one time under each of those headings.

Part 2: How to Find the Records

This heading should include content such as online record collections, record availability (such as date restrictions), any special instructions about how to navigate a record website to locate the records, etc. - in essence, anything the user may need to know in order to locate the records.

International Vital Records Handbook

4. Go to the International Vital Records Handbook on Google Books.

5. On the left-hand side of the screen, locate the Search box (see the red circle in the picture below)

6. Search for the name of your country in that search box.

7. In the list of search results, look for the result that appears to be the heading for the section on that country. This is where much of the Civil Registration Office information will come from.

• NOTE: Not all pages on Google Books are available to see online for free. If there is no preview for the page you need, mention it in the Notes section of the Task List, and skip the rest of International Vital Records Handbook section of this project)
  
  
  

8. Use the information found from the International Vital Records Handbook and put it under the Civil Registration template heading "Offices to Contact"

9. Format the addresses for Civil Registration institutions as the following:

'''Name of Institution/Office'''
Address
Address
Address
Telephone: INSERT PHONE NUMBER HERE
Email: INSERT EMAIL ADDRESS HERE
Website: URL 
(Optional) description of institution and their service/accessibility.

For example, the Civil Registration Office information could appear like this:

Chief Civil Status Officer
Chief Civil Status Officer
Division of Immigration and Civil Status
P.O. Box 430
Victoria, Mahe
Seychelles
Telephone: +248 4 293 600
Email: info@immigration.gov.sc
Website: ics.gov.sc

10. After you have extracted all relevant information from the International Vital Records Handbook, make sure to add code for a reference, so we cite where we got the information from. Copy and Paste the following code at the end of the information you insert from the Handbook.

<ref>Thomas Jay Kemp, “International Vital Records Handbook, 5th Edition,” Genealogical Publishing Co, Inc. Baltimore : 2009.</ref>

FamilySearch Historical Records

11. Go to FamilySearch Historical Records.

12. Underneath "Research by Location" click on the continent your country is in, and then choose the country you are working on.

Look at all the online collections to see if there are any Civil Registration collections.

13. If there are Civil Registration collections available, add the following code underneath the "How to Find the Records" heading.

• NOTE: IF there are not any collections available, skip to step 15.

===FamilySearch Collections===

14. Add the collection information under the new heading. The template for adding the collection:

*'''YEAR-YEAR:''' [URL Collection name] at [URL General website name] – index and images

For example:

1787-1957: Cape Verde, Catholic Church Records, 1787-1957 at FamilySearch – index and images

FamilySearch Catalog

15. Next, go to the FamilySearch Catalog, and search for your country in the "Place" search box.

16. If "Civil Registration" is in the list of results, click on it to see what collections/films, etc. are available for that country.

• NOTE: If your country does not have any results labeled "Civil Registration", skip to step 20.
  
  

17. For Civil Registration, we are ideally looking for Catalog results with an "official" author, such as a civil registration office, a locality, or another government institution. If a Catalog result has an author that appears to be the work of an singular person or another group of individuals that aren't an official, record-keeping institution, do not include that particular Catalog result in the Civil Registration page for your country.

• NOTE: If you have any questions about whether or not a Catalog result should be included, please contact Amber.
  
  

18. If you have found a good Civil Registration result in the Catalog, add the following heading underneath the "How to Find the Records" heading:

====FamilySearch Catalog====

19. Use the following example to format the link to the Catalog results underneath the new "FamilySearch Catalog" heading.

*'''YEAR-YEAR:''' [URL Collection name] in the [https://www.familysearch.org/search/catalog/search/ FamilySearch Catalog] – PHYSICAL DESCRIPION (e.g. microfilm, images, book, etc.)

For example:

1850-1880: Mortality schedules of the United States census, 1850 - 1880 (New York State) in the FamilySearch Catalog – microfilm, images

• NOTE: As you open the Catalog entry, lower on the page, you will likely see an icon of a camera, or an icon of a microfilm. That indicates whether or not the Catalog item has been digitized, or is still only available on microfilm. If there is no icon, read around the rest of the page to figure out in what format the item is in.

Part 3: Historical Background

21. Information for the "Historical Background" heading should primarily include record-keeping dates and places, but can also include any historic, geographic, or local aspects that effected the civil registration/vital record keeping, such as colonization by other countries, wars, etc.

22. Organize any information you have into bullet points, listing the key events/facts chronologically (see Zambia example).

23. Occasionally, in the previous International Vital Records Handbook step, you may find information that can be placed under the "Historical Background" section (see Benin example).

• See also the country's History page in the FS Wiki for any potentially relevant information.
  
  

24. For an example of what a "Historical Background" section could look like, see the Zambia example.

Part 4: Coverage and Compliance/Information Recorded in the Records

24. For both the heading "Coverage and Compliance" and the heading "Information Recorded in the Records", use whatever information already existed on the page when you arrived (if there is any), and/or any information you find along the way in the previous steps that has to do with either of the two headings.

• Coverage and Compliance: should contain information such as: records start date, registration frequency, locations covered, populations covered, compliance dates, etc.
• Information Recorded in the Records: should include information such as birth, marriage, divorce, death, etc. - make sure to include what information can be found, such as relationships, dates, locations, etc.
  
  

25. If you are unable to find information for either of the two headings, keep the heading code on the page, but just leave the content under the heading blank. Make a note in the Task List if there are headings that are blank. We will have to do some more in-depth digging in the future to populate those headings, and we just want to make sure we get that information in the future if it can't be gathered this time around.