Generating Citations with Cite-Builder.com – An Interview with Jenny Joyce

Summary

---

Podcast Summary: Family Tree Magazine Podcast

Episode: Generating Citations with Cite-Builder.com – An Interview with Jenny Joyce
Host: Lisa Louise Cook
Guest: Jenny Joyce, Creator of Cite-Builder
Date: August 15, 2025

---

Overview

In this episode, host Lisa Louise Cook interviews Jenny Joyce, the creator of Cite-Builder.com, an online citation generator designed specifically for genealogists. The discussion centers on the importance of source citation in genealogy, the practical features and strengths of Cite-Builder, and how both beginners and professionals can streamline proper citation workflows using this tool. Throughout the episode, Jenny shares insights on the evolution of the site, supported citation styles, user experience, and premium features—all with the mission of making accurate citation both easy and accessible.

---

Key Discussion Points

The Importance of Source Citation in Genealogy

• Why cite sources?
  • Citations allow both oneself and others to retrace research, verify data, and assess reliability.
  • "Only by having proper source citations can you go back and find it and work out for yourself which is correct and so on." — Jenny Joyce [01:32]
  • Proper citation is mandatory in academic courses (e.g., University of Strathclyde), but remains equally valuable for personal and familial genealogical research.

How Cite-Builder.com Works

• Template-Based Citation Generation:
  • Users select from over 800 templates, a number that continues to grow.
  • Templates are organized by record type (e.g., censuses) and source location (e.g., U.S., UK, Australia).
  • After choosing the record type (e.g., U.S. 1910 Census), users pick a preferred citation style (Evidence Explained, Chicago, University of Strathclyde, etc.).
  • Cite-Builder prompts only for the necessary information, autofilling known details where possible.
  • Generated citations include first footnote, subsequent footnote, and bibliography entry.
  • One-click copy/paste functionality enables integration into various genealogy platforms and documents.
  • Styling such as italics is preserved where supported by the destination platform.
  • "You click Build Citation. It pops up a first footnote, a subsequent footnote, and a source list or bibliography entry." — Jenny Joyce [03:40]

Ease-of-Use and Error Reduction

• Template Structure:
  • Templates prevent users from skipping vital citation details (e.g., page or line numbers).
  • For difficult-to-find data, such as Australian government creating agency fields, Jenny has researched and pre-filled information.
  • "My hope is that by making it easy for people to cite their sources, more people will do so." — Jenny Joyce [05:40]

Compatibility with Genealogy Software and Sites

• Copy-and-paste Method:
  • Works with any program or website where text can be pasted, including Ancestry, MyHeritage, and FindMyPast.
  • Cite-Builder is developing guides for Legacy, Family Tree Maker, RootsMagic, and others for seamless integration.
  • "We're writing guides... to help people know how to do that." — Jenny Joyce [06:47]
  • FAQs on the Cite-Builder website provide instructions for major genealogy sites.

Supported Citation Styles

• Variety of Citation Styles:
  • Main focus is on Evidence Explained, Chicago, University of Strathclyde, University of Tasmania, and MHRA.
  • Styles for specific archives are included per their individual guides.
  • MLA is not emphasized, as it is considered less helpful for genealogy.
  • "There's no limit to how many styles we can code up for each individual template." — Jenny Joyce [09:13]

Origins and Development of Cite-Builder

• Family Effort:
  • Conceptualized by Jenny due to the tediousness of crafting proper citations.
  • Developed with her husband Andy; launched in September 2021.
  • Continuous development and adaptation to international records.
  • "It's been an interesting challenge for me learning some of the things I didn't know about American Records." — Jenny Joyce [10:24]

Pricing: Free vs. Premium

• Free Access:
  • About 40% of templates available.
• Premium Subscription (A$35/year; approx. US$20):
  • Full template access, usability enhancements, ability to create and reuse personal templates, save favorites, advanced search, and pin frequently used templates.
  • "Every so often we think of something else to add." — Jenny Joyce [12:25]
  • Special Offer: Listeners can use coupon code FTM20 for a 20% discount on the first year. [12:31]

Getting Started

• Learning Resources:
  • Plenty of tutorial videos and guides are available on the website to assist new users.
  • "We've got a lot of videos... showing you how to use the tool, sort of tutorial, kinds of things." — Jenny Joyce [13:31]

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "Only by having proper source citations can you go back and find it and work out for yourself which is correct and so on."
  — Jenny Joyce [01:32]

• "My hope is that by making it easy for people to cite their sources, more people will do so."
  — Jenny Joyce [05:40]

• "Wherever you can paste something, you can paste one of these citations that we've crafted for you."
  — Jenny Joyce [03:53]

• "Templates prevent users from skipping vital citation details ... the templates take care of that for us, doesn’t it?"
  — Lisa Louise Cook [05:11]

• "I had the idea for a long time because I realized how time consuming and tedious it was to properly craft the citations."
  — Jenny Joyce [09:49]

• "It is. And we've got a lot of videos... showing you how to use the tool, sort of tutorial, kinds of things. So that makes it easier for people to get started to see how they use it."
  — Jenny Joyce [13:31]

---

Segment Timestamps

• 00:43 — Introduction to Jenny Joyce and rationale for citation
• 01:04 — Why citations matter (personal and communal value)
• 03:03 — How Cite-Builder templates work
• 05:11 — Preventing errors and the value of template completeness
• 06:20 — Website compatibility and practical user guidance
• 07:43 — Citation styles supported and their relevance
• 09:43 — How Cite-Builder started and its ongoing evolution
• 10:49 — Cost, premium features, and special discount code
• 13:31 — Getting started: tutorials and user support

---

How to Find and Use Cite-Builder

• Website: cite-builder.com
• Use coupon FTM20 for 20% off your first year's premium membership

---

Cite-Builder.com makes the complex task of genealogy citation both approachable and accurate for hobbyists and professionals alike, lowering barriers to best practices and helping researchers leave reliable, revisitable trails for generations to come.

Transcript

[A]

Foreign. Welcome to Family Tree magazine's Best Websites podcast. This is the podcast devoted to finding the best websites to help you with your genealogy research. I'm Lisa Louise Cook. Have you ever struggled with creating source citations for your genealogy research? If you have, you are not alone. In fact, it can be such a challenge that Jenny Joyce is created the Site Builder website. It's an online citation generator. It's just for genealogists and she is here all the way from Australia to tell us all about it. Welcome to the podcast, Jenny.

[B]

Thank you.

[A]

So you built a website all about helping genealogists cite their sources. So I think before we get into the website itself, how about you tell our listeners why you think that they should really care about and invest in citing their sources? Because not everybody does it.

[B]

No, sadly they don't. The cliched or no, that the traditional answer is it helps other people and you find your sources again. And that by knowing where you got the information from, people can judge the reliability of the conclusions that you've come to. But I would stress very much the helping you find it again. You know, we've all had that situation where we suddenly find something and we'd come to a conclusion a long time ago. And you think, where did I find that from? Did I mistype something? Why have I got a baptism before a birthday? Where's the mistake? Only by having proper source citations can you go back and find it and work out for yourself which is correct and so on. And of course, if you were doing a course like at the University of Strathclyde, you've got no choice, you have to do it.

[A]

Yeah, exactly. You know, if you're not doing a class like that, then you're kind of doing the genealogy for yourself and for your family. It's still an investment in the future. In the future for you and for your descendants. So if anybody wants to go back and kind of figure out what in the world happened here and be able to look at something again, they can. So it's like a breadcrumb trail and I just think it's. It's well worth the investment. So that's what your website helps us do. Because source citation can be a little bit overwhelming. People, I think they worry about, oh, gosh, what if I'm not doing it right? Can you walk us through the basics of how Site Builder works? For example, if I have a census record or I have an old family Bible, how do I use your website to create a source citation?

[B]

Well, if you've got, say A census record. You'd come into our website, we've got a whole lot of top level template groups and they come down to about more than 800 templates at the moment. And that's always growing. So you work your way down through censuses for the US and then pick which census you wish to cite. Say the 1910 census, select that. Then you choose which style you want, because there are different styles and they've got different rules. You've got Evidence Explained, you've got University of Strathclyde, you've got Chicago, all sorts of all number of styles. So you choose the one you want. And most people seem to choose Evidence Explained. And then it asks you the information that you need and only the information that you need. And it will fill in other information that we know, like that the source of it was from National Archives and Records Administration, real number, whatever. Then you click Build Citation. It pops up a first footnote, a subsequent footnote, and a source list or bibliography entry. You click copy to clipboard, and then you paste it wherever you need it, whether that's into a Word document, your family history program, your ancestry tree, familysearch, family tree. Wherever you can paste something, you can paste one of these citations that we've crafted for you, which doesn't happen for censuses, but when the citation needs something like italics, we put them there and they're preserved in what's copied. And so long as the source that you're pasting it into supports the italics which say ancestry doesn't, they would be preserved.

[A]

Oh, terrific. So the templates you're talking about, the beauty of this is, is you've already kind of predetermined what all the components of the citation are. It's so easy to make notes about, oh, I found this record. And then you forget to put the page number, or you forget to put the line number or whatever it is, the templates take care of that for us, doesn't it?

[B]

Exactly. And for example, with the New South Wales archives in the here in Australia, some of the fields that are needed, like the creating agency that made that record in these government records, it can be hard to find. But I've spent the time tracking that down for everybody. So my hope is that by making it easy for people to cite their sources, more people will do so. Which is good for me as well, because then when I see somebody else's sources, research, and I look at some fact that I hadn't got seen before, by looking at the citation, I can know where it was and I Can go back and check it myself.

[A]

Exactly. Now, you just touched on that. We could copy the citation after creating it there on your website and put that into, let's say, an online family tree. Go back over specifically, which genealogy websites do you support? Can we use this in all of them or do you have upload features? How does that work? And which websites are you kind of supporting with this?

[B]

Anything that you can paste into. We're actually in the process of writing guides for each of the major genealogy programs like Legacy and Family Tree Maker and Roots Magic, to help people know how to do that. Because I've observed that there are people who are using those programs who don't know every single nut and bolt within those programs and how to do that. So we're writing guides for that for those people.

[A]

Oh, that's fantastic. And then if we're using an online tree at Ancestry or myheritage or Find My Past, it's really just copy it and paste is.

[B]

It is.

[A]

There you go.

[B]

Okay. And we've got instructions for those websites in the FAQs.

[A]

Wonderful.

[B]

We've already written those ones.

[A]

Now, you mentioned different styles. We know there is the Chicago, there's mla. How many styles of citations do you support?

[B]

Well, MLA is a good example. We don't tend to use that because it's not a great citation style for genealogy. It's what's called an author date style. So you put the brackets with the author comma, the date, in the middle of your text, and it isn't easy to find the full information and it makes it hard to read. But we've certainly got. Not every template has every style yet. We've got a lot of evidence explained. A lot of University of Strathclyde, University of Tasmania, because a lot of people in Australia are doing the course there. We've got Chicago, We've got mhra, which is an English style, very popular there. We've also got styles for each of the individual archives because they've also all got their own guides on how they want their records cited. And if you want to do that citation by that style, we've got those set up. There's the way it's structured. There's no limit to how many styles we can code up for each individual template.

[A]

Wonderful. And as you said, evidence. Evidence explained is really probably the most popular amongst genealogists and in the uk. In the us in the US yeah.

[B]

Not in the uk, as I say, Mr. H A or Strathclyde are more popular in the. In the uk.

[A]

Right, right. So we're talking about the website Site Builder. So it's c I t e-builder.com.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

And Jenny Joyce, this was your brainchild. How did all of this come about?

[B]

I had the idea for a long time because I realized how time consuming and tedious it was to properly craft the citations. And Andy then had enough time to code it up. So we did that. And we first launched in September 2021, and we've been building it and growing it ever since. And as I say, constantly adding new templates and such like. It's been an interesting challenge for me learning some of the things that I didn't know about American Records.

[A]

Oh, I bet. Is Andy your husband?

[B]

Yes, sorry. Andy is my husband.

[A]

Ah. It's a family business. That's wonderful.

[B]

It is.

[A]

Well, let's talk about the cost involved. What can users access for free at Site Builder and what features come with the premium subscription? How does all that work?

[B]

The Basic, which is the free version, has access to about 40% of the templates. So the full lot of templates is available to the premium members who also have access to some usability features, like being able to make personal templates where you've preloaded half of. Like when you're doing a baptism register, you're probably going to cite several records from it so you can save part of it and then reuse that. We've also got the ability for premium users to save favorites. So if there's something that they type all the time, I mean, if Massachusetts is something you need and you have trouble getting the right numbers of letters in it, you could just save it as a favorite. We also have a search feature, so if you didn't know, for example, where I'd put family Bibles because it's not a top level thing, then you just search for the word Bible and it brings it up for you. That's another premium feature. And because we have so many top level groups, we've sorted them alphabetically, but that can mean something that you may want to use frequently is down the bottom of the list. So we give users, premium users, the ability to pin certain groups to the top of the page to just make it quicker to get to so there's less scrolling. Those are the premium features at the moment, but every so often we think of something else to add.

[A]

And you said that there's a premium version?

[B]

Yes. So it's 35 Australian dollars per year, which is probably about US$20 at the moment. With the exchange rate, obviously that goes up and down a bit. But I am offering your listeners a 20% discount on their first year's subscription if they use the coupon code FTM20.

[A]

Excellent. Oh, that's wonderful. So a one year subscription, you can get all of the templates and so many more of the features. So we'll have that coupon code on our Show Notes page. As Janine just mentioned, it's FT TM20 for 20% off. That's wonderful to hear. Anything else that you want to share with us about the website or how to particularly just get started using it. Sometimes that's the hardest part, isn't it? It's just starting to use a new tool.

[B]

It is. And we've got a lot of videos. We've got links on the top of the screen to videos showing you how to use the tool, sort of tutorial, kinds of things. So that makes it easier for people to get started to see how they use it.

[A]

Well, Jenny, I just think everyone can benefit from properly citing their sources and you help us do it. Thank you so much for joining us here on the podcast today. We appreciate it.

[B]

Well, thank you very much for having me.

[A]

Thanks so much for joining me for the Family Tree Magazine Best Websites Podcast. You can find a link over to this month's best [e-mail] podcast also, while you're at the website, I would encourage you to sign up for our free email newsletter. It's the perfect way to stay in touch with everything we've got going on at Family Tree Magazine, including our other podcast, the Family Tree Magazine Podcast. I'm Lisa Louise Cook and you can find me at my website genealogygems.com where you'll find links to my Genealogy Gems podcast and our YouTube channel. Until next time, have fun climbing your Family Tree.