* Linking Multimedia Document Sources

[stuartd]

In the thread Multimedi Captions (11041) tatewise said:

Document Sources
The Multimedia tab of the Individual Property Box is meant for pictures of Individuals.
Source document images for events such as Birth, Baptism, Marriage or Death should be attached to the Multimedia tab of a Source Property Box.
This is because such documents usually provide details of more than one Individual and are related to their Facts such as Birth, Baptism, Marriage or Death rather than the person as a whole.
Each Source Record would then be linked to each relevant Fact via a Citation using the yellow Sources pane.

If I understand this correctly, documents can only be attached to the Source, and not the individual citations. So for example does that mean that a copy of a birth/baptism registration page from the RG4 series would require the individual entry itself to be the Source?
I have so far tended to use Source for the "source of my information", so for me "Lancs.OPC" is a Source, since I access many records via the Online Parish Clerk project for Lancashire - but obviously I have hundreds of distinct citations for the individual records. What I am trying to do is to link a document copy to the specific citation, otherwise all documents would be linked to all occurrences of "Lancs.OPC" as a Source.
At the moment I have these document files linked via the Multimedia Tab to the Individual Record, but I would prefer to link them to the relevant Fact.
I have a sinking feeling that I'm missing something very obvious here, but the "Getting the most..." book doesn't seem to address this issue.
Some advice would be very much appreciated.
Many thanks.
Stuart

[tatewise]

Hi Stuart.
There is nothing in FH that prevents any type of Multimedia image, whether a picture or document, being linked to any Individual Record, Family Record, Fact, Citation, or Source Record.
It is more a matter of convention and semantics, and the practicalities of Reports and Diagrams.

Diagrams displays images linked to Individual Records although there is an Exclude from Diagrams option for each image.
So if you link a Multimedia document image to an Individual Record it may appear in Diagrams unless you take care to prevent it.

Reports display images linked to Individual Records, Family Record, and Facts with the Individuals & Families, whereas it displays those linked to Citations and Source Records with the Sources.

There are two popular methods of documenting Sources.

Method 1 creates a separate Source Record for each document, and so it is easy to associate document images and transcripts with each Source Record.
With this method Repositories are used to record the location of sources such as OPC for Lancashire.

Method 2 (as used by you) creates a Source Record for large classes of document such as OPC for Lancashire, but as you have found it is not obvious where to attach images.
In the same way that you can put transcripts in the Text From Source of the Citations you can also attach images to Citations, but it has to be done via the All tab of the Individual/Family Property Box and is not very visible.
These also have to be repeated in each Citation associated with the same document.

There is more on these two methods in the ancestralsources:index|> Ancestral Sources program via its Help > Index > Options page.

Also have a look at the how_to:index#beginners_guide|> Family Historian - Beginners Guide under Using Pictures and Using and Recording Sources.

Finally, you can experiment with Multimedia, Sources, Diagrams, Reports, etc in the Family Historian Sample Project without risk to your main Project.

[stuartd]

Thanks for your quick response, Mike.
I'm grateful for your very straightforward explanation of the various ways of treating Sources and attached files.
Treating each document as a Source is probably the best option, but with almost 3000 individuals and many hundreds of documents it's probably too late for me to contemplate going back over everything and restructuring my records. Attaching documents to the Individual via the Multimedia Tab may not be the the most sensible or logical way of working but at least I know where to find things that way. So long as I make sure any photograph has the highest priority and Diagrams are set to show just the first image then it won't pose any problems in my charts.
One frustration I found in the various chapters of the otherwise excellent "Getting the most from FH5" is that most of the detailed guidance on multimedia deals with pictures, of which I have a handful, as opposed to documents of which I have hundreds of various sorts.
Still, at least I now have a clearer understanding of multimedia handling thanks to your help, and I will certainly take a look at the links you recommended and play around with the tutorial file.
Again, thanks for your support.
Stuart

[johnmorrisoniom]

I had been using "Method 2" for all my sources for over 10 years.

I have now decided to switch over to "Method 1", but doing it slowly, and only for sources with an image as a source.

I have over 40,000 in my file, so I have started right at the beginning with myself. I am revisiting all my data, and redoing all my entries , adding images when found.

I have been pleasantly surprised by finding links that weren't around when I started out, and even recognizing names in census entries that I originally record, as they did not seem to be connected (Family servant who turned out to be a niece).
I will end up with a mixture of source types, but I'm not in a hurry to get it all done today (I have over 4,000 census images alone).
In the end, go with the method that best suites your way of working.
I would also advise using Ancestral Sources to enter your baptism, Marriage and census entries. You can use method 1 or method 2 (or even a mixture, Method 1 for 1 type of data method 2 for another)