Reporting Find-A-Grave Records

"Most of my cemetery information comes from Find-A-Grave. Does that make a difference in how I create my cemetery reports?" Yes, there are differences in how you should treat this online information.

• Your citation should make it clear that you did not view this gravestone yourself.

If you would like to see an example of a Find-A-Grave source citation, take a look at this one from our TMG citations blog. The focus of the citation is the website, not the cemetery, and your name does not appear anywhere.

• Although you will probably download the gravestone photograph and link it to your TMG database, you do not own the copyright to the photo.

What does this mean?  It means that you can't publish a report that includes any copyrighted photographs without the explicit permission of the person who took those photos. It is not enough to cite the photographer in your citation. You must obtain permission from that person before publishing anything that includes that photograph. What does "publish" include?

1. A book for your family.
2. A report sent to another researcher.
3. A report posted online.
4. An e-mail message.
5. A GEDCOM file that includes exhibits.
6. A family tree on Ancestry or other online site.
7. Any physical appearance of that photograph whose subsequent reappearance you can't control.

If you link a copyrighted photograph to your TMG database, there is a risk that it might be published inadvertently. It's so nice having that picture handy, though, so is there a way to minimize the risk?

Gravestone photographs I take myself are linked to the corresponding burial event tag.  Cemetery reports that include photographs are designed to print exhibits linked to this event tag.  Therefore, I cannot link photographs to which I don't own the copyright to the burial event tag. There are two other possibilities.  Link the photograph to its citation or link the photograph to the source.  Pros and cons:

• Linking the photograph to the citation makes it easy to review the individual's gravestone, but exhibits linked to citations do not appear in an individual's Exhibit Log.  This is my choice, but this also means that I don't create reports that print citation exhibits - and it's not easy to view all the photographs I've downloaded from a website.
• Linking the photograph to the source makes it easy to see all the gravestone photographs you've downloaded from a website, but it's more difficult to review an individual's gravestone.  Exhibits linked to sources don't appear in an individual's Exhibit Log, either.  Using this option also means you must be careful creating reports that print source exhibits - and I do have a few of those.

A picture is worth a thousand words.  Compare these two TMG screenshots.

Burial tag: Cemetery viewed and photographed

Burial tag: Find-A-Grave record

1. The first Citation screen shows that the record came from the cemetery itself. The date is the date the cemetery was viewed. The second screen shows that the record came from Find-A-Grave, the date is the date the site was accessed, and credit is given to the photographer - who photographed this stone at my request. Thank you, Garczar!
2. The green camera icon in each screen shows that an exhibit has been linked to each record. In the first example, the event icon is lit, and this exhibit will print in my cemetery reports. In the second example, the citation icon is lit, and this exhibit will not print in a report.
3. Memo and location information is similar in both records. Both memos contain gravestone transcriptions in the Memo2 field. The first burial event is from a small cemetery, and the photograph number in the Memo1 field is used as the locator. The second burial event references a large cemetery, and the section, lot and grave numbers are found in the Addressee field.

How you choose to treat Find A Grave records is really up to you, but TMG does provide methods that allow you to responsibly differentiate between those gravestones you've actually visited and photographed and those stones some nice Find A Grave volunteer photographed for you.  Of course, if that volunteer gives you permission to publish his or her photograph, you can then link it to burial event - but don't forget to state on the photograph that you have permission to publish it from the copyright holder.

Cemetery Report -- with Pictures!

TMG allows the user to add exhibits - photographs, text documents, OLE objects, etc. - in a wide variety of locations.  What you add and where you add it depends upon how you want to use the exhibit.  Are you like me?  Do you love walking through cemeteries photographing tombstones, whether they belong to your family or not?  Do you have thousands of digital tombstone photographs scattered on your hard drive?  They're just waiting for you to figure out what to do with them, aren't they?

• Photographs can be linked in TMG to: People, to Events, to Citations, to Sources, to Repositories, and to Places.
• Linked photographs will appear in reports only if they are linked to  People, to Events, to Citations, or to Sources.
• Therefore, if you want tombstone pictures to appear in a report, do not link them to Repositories or Places.  Of course, you can link them to more than one person and more than one entity.

Not every report type allows the user to print exhibits (photographs).  To help me figure out what report types allow what options, I created this simple chart (PDF file). This chart shows that:

• The Descendant Indented Narrative, the Individual Narrative, and the Journal reports are the only reports that provide all photograph options.
• The Ahnentafel report prints photographs linked to People and Events.  This report is limited in the people it includes, so I seldom use it.
• The Family Group Sheet and Individual Detail reports print only the Primary Person exhibit.  Therefore, unless you link your tombstone photograph to a person and make it the primary image, these two reports won't serve the purpose.

It looks like our cemetery report with tombstone photographs must be one of the three narrative-style reports.  Practice with each one to see what works best for your purposes.  Examples and instructions can be found on our instruction pages, specifically "Cemetery Reports: Including Tombstone Photographs."

Here are some ideas, comments and questions that came up in our discussion.

• How do you enter a tombstone transcription?  Or is a transcription even necessary?
• What about a tombstone that memorializes more than one person?  How should that be handled?
• How do you create a report that shows who is buried next to whom?
• My only cemetery records came from Find-A-Grave.  How should I report them?

Before these questions are discussed more fully, it would be a good idea to practice with a few cemetery reports on your own.  You may come up with some of the answers on your own.