Wikidata:Property proposal/civil registration district

registration district

Originally proposed at Wikidata:Property proposal/Person

   Done: registration district (P5564) (Talk and documentation)

Description	qualifier indicating location for references to a civil or ecclesiastical registry
Represents	Subclasses of administrative territorial entity (Q56061)
Data type	Item
Domain	References to instances of resident registration (Q254213).
Allowed values	any item that's an instance of civil registration district (Q47174074) or of a subclass of religious administrative entity (Q51041800)
Example	Anne Eliza Back (Q42333974): date of birth (P569) 1841 Reference stated in (P248): Western Australian Registry of Births, Deaths, and Marriages (Q42333722) ?inventory number (P217): 15 ?catalog code (P528): 1841 birth # 15 registration district: Fremantle District (Q42650404) As a qualifier for references to instances of resident registration (Q254213), for example in Anne Eliza Back (Q42333974) where instance of (P31) has a reference.
Source	civil registries
Planned use	using entries from Western Australian Registry of Births, Deaths, and Marriages (Q42333722) as references

Motivation

The closest one can get to this seems to be location (P276) but that's not permitted for reference qualifiers. Same with located in the administrative territorial entity (P131). I brought this up at Wikidata_talk:WikiProject_Genealogy#References_to_civil_registers? but with no response, so I thought I'd bring it here.

There is also the concept of civil registration ID, but that's probably a separate discussion.

Thanks! Sam Wilson 02:09, 22 December 2017 (UTC)

Discussion

• I'm not exactly sure how the example is supposed to look like. Given that specifying examples for references isn't as clear in the template, can you create example items on https://test.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Main_Page ? ChristianKl ❪✉❫ 13:36, 22 December 2017 (UTC)

  I've created https://test.wikidata.org/wiki/Q115908 with the minimal example. Sam Wilson 01:25, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

  Somehow I don't think this should be in P31, but maybe date of birth (P569) or date of death (P570).
  --- Jura 17:24, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

  No, I quite agree, it's just there as an example. It should be used as part of a reference wherever is appropriate. Like you say, for dates of birth or death, or perhaps places of birth or death or even country of citizenship etc. Sam Wilson 02:20, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

  @Samwilson: Sorry for not responding earlier. I updated the sample above. I think it's preferable to include a sample that people can actually imitate directly. Ideally, it would also provide the correct way to include the cited source. I'm not sure about "publication date" and "inventory number". Once the property is created, we should probably add civil registries to Help:Sources.
  --- Jura 10:44, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

  @Jura1: Good points. I think publication date (P577) is okay, as these things are 'published' as soon as they're recorded, really. inventory number (P217) on the other hand, I agree, does sound strange. It does have an alias of 'reference number' though, which is really what this is. Either way, if these aren't sufficient, do we need to propose new properties to fulfill these functions, or can we tackle the current proposal on its own? Perhaps we want three new properties or none? Sam Wilson 03:40, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

• ┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ I saw some quotes that just mentioned (equivalent of) "1841 birth # 15". I don't think "inventory number" works for that, maybe "catalog code".
  --- Jura 17:11, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

  @Jura1: Sounds reasonable. catalog code (P528) is meant to be used in conjunction with catalog (P972) though. Would the latter supplant stated in (P248) do you think?
  Sam Wilson 13:30, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

• How international is this concept? I think in the US all civil registration is at the town level, but if located in the administrative territorial entity (P131) can't be used then I suppose something like this would be needed. Perhaps you could come up with 2 or 3 specific examples from different countries to illustrate how this would work? ArthurPSmith (talk) 19:47, 22 December 2017 (UTC)

  It's intended to be universal and apply to any resident registration (Q254213) that is divided into subsections of any sort (whether they're called regions or whatever). The trouble is that currently there's no way to specify which subsection a reference is for, and the civil registry can sometimes be quite large. This wouldn't apply where the civil register already is of small scale (e.g. a US town, or small geographical area). For another country's usage, see the UK's BMD districts. Sam Wilson 01:25, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

•  Support Ok, I think this is something sensible to add to better specify sources for this kind of information. ArthurPSmith (talk) 18:44, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
•  Comment to sort out the qualifier question, I left a note at Wikidata:Project_chat#Help:Sources_and_birth/death,_etc._registries.
  --- Jura 14:20, 13 February 2018 (UTC)
  • @Samwilson: looks like not much came from it. Do you prefer a separate new qualifier or use the existing "catalog code". In the first case, you might want to add a proposal for it on above on this page.
    --- Jura 06:47, 25 February 2018 (UTC)
•  Comment To be correct this property implies that we create an item for each civil district in the world. Then what's about place of publication (P291) ? And I really would like to see different example from different countries like France or Germany with a real different system than the English-speaking world. Snipre (talk) 21:43, 13 February 2018 (UTC)

  @Snipre: Yes, perhaps you are correct, and place of publication (P291) is suitable. I have added a model reference to 'date of birth' in Anne Eliza Back (Q42333974); does that look okay to you? The trouble is that it's not actually the place of publication; in this case, the place of publication would be Perth (Q3183). Then again, there's no real reason place of publication (P291) can't be set to different things for the catalogue vs on the reference to the catalogue... or is there? Does that not make sense? I'm happy for it to be whatever, but don't want to go doing the wrong thing! :) Sam Wilson 06:49, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

  I've stated my opposition elsewhere to saying the registration is in a catalog. Leave that aside. Suppose a certain place, like Massachusetts, lets anyone order a birth certificate. To get the birth certificate, you have to fill in the place of birth on the request form. So a name for the place of birth that is acceptable to Massachusetts Registry of Vital Records and Statistics would serve as the registration district. This is a necessary piece of information to retrieve the appropriate record; we can suppose that there would have been dozens of John Smiths born in June 1970, but probably only 1 born in Springfield. Jc3s5h (talk) 19:04, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

•  Strong support we are right now setting up/cleaning all +3500 church parishes in Sweden see project wmse-riksarkivet-tora task T199784. I have seen a problem in sv:Wikipedia and Wikidata that we have difficult to make a difference between the physical location a person died at and were we find the church books. In Sweden we right now connects the Swedish National Archive reference code (P5324) to all parish of the Church of Sweden (Q615980) see status map ==> Wikidata will be a reference tool for people doing Swedish genealogy - Salgo60 (talk) 15:59, 30 July 2018 (UTC)
• @Salgo60: one problem though is this property label specifies civil registration - i.e. NOT church records. However, I think a more general property label, perhaps "registration location" or "place of registration" (by analogy to "place of publication") would perhaps work? @Samwilson: Would that work for you? ArthurPSmith (talk) 17:58, 30 July 2018 (UTC)
  • Agree in Sweden we also changed from church administration to civil 1 juli 1991 - Salgo60 (talk) 18:17, 30 July 2018 (UTC)
    • Yes, definitely making it encompass civil + ecclesiastical registrations does sound like a good idea. Maybe just "registration district"? With values to be districts of any sorts of registers. Sam Wilson 00:25, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

• @Samwilson, ChristianKl, Jura1, Snipre, Salgo60:  Done ArthurPSmith (talk) 18:10, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

  @ArthurPSmith: Thanks! Sam Wilson 00:39, 6 August 2018 (UTC)

Broader discussion

A broader discussion is occurring at Help talk:Sources#Vital records and other archive collections as sources. I'll summarize my comments there by saying a registration district property may indeed be useful, but catalog (P972) is not a very good property to reference a birth registry with. Jc3s5h (talk) 18:43, 6 February 2021 (UTC)