The identification of subdivisions within archives and the numbering of groups of documents or individual documents varies widely from archive to archive. To facilitate the location of the original documents by researchers, every effort has been made to adhere to the identification and numbering protocols of the applicable repositories. These frequently do not match practices followed in American repositories or dictated according to bibliographic standards by institutions or editors.
Document identifying information is then followed in the data entries by notes or excerpts from the referenced pages or folios. Those notes or excerpts may be in the original language of the document or an English translation or a combination (especially when specific vocabulary seems of particular moment):
an Hernando de Alvarado justicia mayor de Colima...Aug. 18, 1544 or
Gonzalo Hernández, residente en el valle de Atlixco, sells 400 cabras to an Antonio Álvarez, vecino de los Ángeles, carpintero, Hernández does not know how to sign, for example.
Information from published sources that is included in the data base is recorded in much the same manner as that from manuscript sources. The major difference is that source identification includes name of author and title of publication in place of archive name and identifying information on the document in question. Full citational data on both manuscripts and published works is shown in the comprehensive bibliography which comprises Section 9, below.