Family Historian User Group

Hi

I was just wondering how other people treat sources which turn out not to be relevant? I have a lot of birth indexes I am going through and some of them are not correct. Do I just attach them to the birth fact and change the Assessment? I have version 3 but upgrading to version 6 next week.

Kind Regards
Melanie

Personally, I "de-link" a source that is incorrect / irrelevant rather than zeroise the Assessment value, but tend to keep a record of it in my sources listing. I have found several cases where I found an index (particularly transcripts of local parish registers) that ultimately was not relevant to any of the individuals I was working on but kept it as it related to, say, a village where many of "my" individuals lived so it may have a relevance in the future.

It rather depends on the particular situation and personal preference.

If you have found absolutely certain Sources for the Birth and unlikely to need the other GRO Indexes that were searched but discarded, then discard them completely.

If you want to keep all the GRO Indexes you searched as a record of your thoroughness and to support your final choice, then by all means keep them as Sources. Perhaps rather than an Assessment, it might be better to leave the Assessment blank, and just add a Note to the Citation saying they are eliminated GRO Indexes. The problem is that those Sources will still appear in Reports. So an alternative is to add a Note to the primary Source Record saying about the rejected GRO Indexes and attach their Source Records to that Note.

I think it's important to record the sources that you looked at and discarded but it will almost certainly confuse if you cite them against people that, in the final analysis, aren't them. If I understand the circumstances correctly, then I would describe the discarded ones by copy and paste within the text of the note for the source record that is for them. This note is effectively the proof statement of the person's birth or whatever and needs to show to me what I have looked for found, accepted or discarded.

Is it possible to have an extra assessment called "incorrect" etc or a flag to the source which can then be used to exclude from reports? I don't intend to keep all of them but the ones that caused confusion especially where I have not bought certificates.

No, but if you attach those invalid Source Records to a Citation Note or Source Record Note then they don't currently appear in Reports.

BTW: I am fascinated to know how you decided which one was correct without buyig Birth Certificates.

Hi

In some cases they are the registers from Scotland (which are as good as) and sometimes it is from then finding lots of census or parish records. There aren't many now and probably not enough to make a big deal of them. I have made the most of some freebie weekends and I have also started doing a course with University of Tasmania. I have noticed that although I have been citing sources I haven't been very thorough and I want to make sure that all my records are clear and I know (and anyone else in the future) knows where things came from. I am getting super excited about downloading V6 on Thursday (not sure how I have resisted downloading the trial!) and really want my records in order.

Thanks for your help