How do I cite the US Census?

Question

At this website, I am not sure which one to pick. http://citationmachine.net/index.php?reqstyleid=1&more=yes

Thanks for any help.

Answer 1

Using the format specified in your link, it would read:

United States. Department of Commerce--Bureau of the Census. <u>Census of the United States</u>. 1790-1900.

The <u> is to show that it's underlined.

***ETA: Guys, she's not using MLA. They gave her a specific format and she has to plug in the information and have it pop out in their format. She's citing the totality of works over several decades so she can use the hyphenated years in lieu of each census individually. NARA is not the publisher, it's the holder of the works. They don't get mentioned in place of the publisher.

Answer 2

Example from ancestry.com:

1900 United States Federal Census. United States of America, Bureau of the Census. Twelfth Census of the United States, 1900. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1900.

OR: U.S. BUREAU OF THE CENSUS, Twenty-first Census, 1990 (pgs. ALL).

Answer 3

"The US census Bureau", United States Government, 2000.

Answer 4

For a scholarly paper, try again. For genealogy, read on.

Any decent genealogy program will have main source and details. So, for instance, you can have main sources "US Census, 1850", "US Census, 1860", and so on. Then, for the family in Siskiyou county in 1860, you use

Scott Valley Twp, Siskiyou, California; Roll: M593_89; Page: 618; Image: 553

for the details. Anyone coming after you can find it quickly from that.

If you like a few big things instead of many small ones, have a main souce of US Census and add the year to the detail citation. Having one separate source for each decade's census keep you from having to type "1900" eight thousand times in the detail citations.