Understand the difference between “record” and “image” and avoid confusion when you research your family or ancestors.
What is a record?
A record is the physical documentation that certifies a life event. Examples include records of a birth, death, baptism, or marriage.
A record can be a single certificate with the name of your ancestor. The record can also contain names of witness or participants in the event.
A record can be only a line or two, or a family grouping in a ledger or register. The record, in this case, is not the entire ledger or register. The record is the specific entry for a life event.
What is a historical document?
A historical document is a physical artifact. Documents can be one page, several pages, or an entire book.
What is a historical image?
A historical image is a scanned photograph of a document.
A marriage certificate is often one page and contains information about a single marriage. In that case, the image of the certificate is the image of a single record.
If the historical document is a ledger with multiple entries, then the image contains information for multiple records.
What is an image group?
Some historical documents contain many images of documents. The collection of images form an image group.
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