* Citations - is there a correct way?

[brianlummis]

There is currently a discussion in the Importing and Exporting forum entitled Citations from TMG (14545) which has made me question the way I am using the "Where within Source" and "Text from Source" fields when recording entries from the GRO Index.

The suggestion is that the details of the Registration District, Volume and Page Number should be recorded in "Where within Source". However I have taken the view, rightly or wrongly, that the "Source" is the GRO Index, the "Where" is either Birth, Marriage or Death with the Page Number in the Index and the "Text" is what is written on that page i.e. the Registration District, the Volume and the Page number against the person's name.

Have I misunderstood the purpose of the two fields, and does it affect any output in Reports etc.? Or does it really matter?

I have had a look at the help files, the Getting the Most from Family Historian book and the Knowledge Base but could not come up with a definitive answer.

Brian

[TimTreeby]

Probably doesn't really matter much so long as

a) Your consistent with how citations for that source are recorded
b) If someone else looks at your data, are they able to easily work out where it came from and find it.

[AdrianBruce]

"Does it really matter?" the only way to answer that is to ask whether anyone else (or you in 6m time) could use the info that you recorded to find your source-data again. I find it useful to trigger a report and check what's come out in the footnote to see if it makes sense or is just an unintelligible list. (Of course, that also depends on what you requested to be printed in the report.)

In the simplest view, that of citing a book, "Where within Source" would be the page number and "Text from Source" would just quote the relevant bit. Life, however, gets more complex. For citing GRO stuff (and many other things besides), you can either have some vague format that you always adhere to, no matter what, or you can spend the time to be a little bit thoughtful. Will it help being thoughtful? Well, unless you try, you'll never know.

Adhering to the same format all the time for anything with "GRO" in its title, eventually fails when you realise that item X doesn't exist past 1995 (say). So I advocate thinking a bit.

Point 1 - citing certificates obtained from the GRO is not the same as citing the GRO indexes. They are different beasts - why would they be the same?
Point 2 - citing the GRO paper indexes books is not quite the same as citing an online index.
Point 3 - citing an online GRO index on FreeBMD (say) is not quite the same as citing an online GRO index on Ancestry (say), etc.
Point 4 - citing the whole of an index as your source is not the same as citing an individual entry in that index (this is Method 2 v. Method 1 in terms used elsewhere in this User Group).

All the index sources are similar but not the same.

So, if I am citing something from FreeBMD, my normal process is to regard the whole of FreeBMD as one source and I therefore have a single source-record for FreeBMD (i.e. I follow Method 2). Looking at my entries I actually don't have anything in "Where within Source" in this case, as it should be pretty obvious how to get to the data. The "Text from Source" is a cut and paste of the entry - it includes the header, name, volume and page etc. Why don't I put volume and page in "Where within Source"? - because that's not how I get to the index entry. I guess it's actually how I (or the GRO staff, I guess) get to the actual certificate, which is not the index entry that we're citing here.

If I am citing something from Ancestry, it's subtly different as I have 6 different source-records
England & Wales, Civil Registration Birth Index, 1837-1915
England & Wales, Civil Registration Birth Index, 1916-2005
and the equivalent for Marriages and Deaths. Why? Simply because they are different menu options in Ancestry and when you do a view-record in Ancestry, those are the "databases online" that you see displayed.

Whether you do that, it's crucial that you record whether you're looking at the FreeBMD, Ancestry, etc, version because their data is different.

So in summary, I suspect that I follow your idea closely for citing online GRO indexes, but don't bother with putting in Marriage etc and the page number in the GRO paper-based indexes simply because I don't get to the data via the page number in the GRO paper-based index. It could be useful as a check that you've arrived in the right place though. Up to you.

[tatewise]

Those two alternatives are generally referred to as Method 1 and Method 2 source citations, as explained in how_to:key_features_for_newcomers|> Key Features for Newcomers under Sources Methods 1 & 2 in glossary:sources#sources_and_citations_-_how_to_use_them|> Sources and Citations - how to use them.

There are a number of important deciding factors.

If you want a transcript in Text From Source &/or attached Media image of each source document, then Method 1 with a Source record per document is easiest and avoids any duplicated Citation entries. The most significant examples are household Census sources.

Otherwise, Method 2 works well, especially when a particular document only needs one Citation. Then you have one generic Source record for say all GRO Birth Indexes, and each Citation just uses Where Within Source giving Page & Volume, etc. It is possible to put a transcript in Text From Source and attach Media images to the Citation itself, but they will have to be repeated when there are multiple facts needing an identical Citation. This is the technique often used in other products, but they avoid the repetition internally. However, when exported as Gedcom they have to invoke the repetition!

Note that the Source record Text From Source field is distinct from the Citation associated Text From Source field.

Many users have a combination of Method 1 and Method 2 sources. It does not matter what you use as long as you are consistent.

As Adrian says it also depends on what you consider as the source. I take the view that the GRO is the master repository for the Indexes and therefore the information is the same whichever online 'copies' and 'interpretations' you discover. Although the recent electronic GRO entries do have a slightly different format. Again being consistent is what matters.

There is little impact on Reports as both methods produce similar results. However, experiment with the different Methods and the Reports you are interested in producing, perhaps with different customisation Options until happy with the results.

[brianlummis]

Thanks for all the responses which seem to indicate that my way of doing things will have no impact any other aspect of FH. I suppose I was intrigued as to why someone would want to move their citations from the "Text" field to the "Where" field which appears to be the purpose of the Plugin currently being discussed in Citations from TMG (14545).

Brian

[SunnyLady]

Have a look at the work of Elizabeth Shown Mills (https://www.evidenceexplained.com/) ... mind boggling in detail in one sense but she was commended by the Strathclyde Genealogy team when I did their course. There is a huge amount in her books and on web site. it's American so there are some funnies from a U.K. perspective.

BUT I think one has to say "Are you going to submit an academic paper?" If so then the convention of the institution etc must be obeyed (no programme I suspect quite gets there). If not, and ESM agrees with what is essentially Adrian's approach, the crucial thing is "can you, or anyone looking at your work, get to the document you are citing next month, year, decade etc?". Provided YOU are consistent in how you use the database then do what works for you. Avoid abbreviations that mean something now but may not later, always date when you saw the item (particularly important for web sites which change ), and whether you saw the original, a copy or a transcription.

I have a short title, a longer "proper" citation and add more detail in notes if it needs further clarification. So what works for me now (needless to say early stuff was insufficintly detailed!) is likely to be different to someone else's.

[tatewise]

Brian, the problem being discussed in Citations from TMG (14545) is due to two things.
1) The data was imported from TMG which I believe promotes the Method 2 Citation approach.
2) The user admits to being inconsistent, and also having data derived years ago from other products, and now wants to sort it out to make it consistent.

[brianlummis]

Thanks Mike - As I have come from TMG I can understand point 1) and I had not picked up point 2)

Brian

[DonF]

Sorry Mike, I must disagree with the comment that 'TMG promotes Method 2'. One of the strengths of TMG is that it doesn't promote any particular way of doing anything - the user is free to use any method they prefer for just about any action.

With reference to 'Method 1' or 'Method 2', the TMG forums over the years have hosted many discussions on this topic, although the language used is usually that of 'splitters' or 'lumpers' - the meaning should be clear, but to use an example of Census records, the splitters will have a Source entry for every census form they refer to; a lumper would have a Source record for each country/year combination, e.g. 'UK 1911' and so on; an extreme lumper would have a Source of 'UK Census' (for all years) or even just 'Census' (all years, all countries).

Obviously, as you have noted, the Citation information will (or should) then contain the detail required to point to the exact source document, and thus the more lumpy you are, the more citation detail is needed.

Of course most people are consistently inconsistent, so a Census lumper may be a Birth record splitter, and so on. TMG doesn't care or force you into any 'method'.

[NickWalker]

Just to give a little bit of historical context... 13 years ago I created a program called 'Gedcom Census', just for me to use, to allow me to enter my census data. I realised that the way that GEDCOM handled citations meant that if I wanted to keep a transcription of the census source without duplication in the file, I would need to keep that data in the source itself. Having talked about Gedcom Census on this site I was persuaded to let other people use it. I spent a lot of time arguing why it was better to store data in the source but there were people who wanted to use Gedcom Census but store the data in the citations so I modified it to allow this and called it 'method 2'. And this is the origin of the 'method 1' and 'method 2' terms. I later replaced Gedcom Census with Ancestral Sources (which deals with all the common source types and not just census) and this is used by, I'd estimate, over a thousand Family Historian users and has been downloaded around 20,000 times. I think largely because method 1 is the default in Ancestral Sources this has become the popular method for Family Historian users or at least the ones who use the FHUG site.

[NickWalker]

Of course most people are consistently inconsistent, so a Census lumper may be a Birth record splitter, and so on. TMG doesn't care or force you into any 'method'.

Yes I agree. I prefer method 1 (splitting) but if all I have as a citation for a birth is a GRO reference I use method 2 (lumping). If I obtain a birth certificate I use method 1 (splitting) to record that. So we don't even need to be consistent regarding which method we use for the same fact type!

Cheers

Nick

[AnneEast]

To be fair, and for balance, FH doesn't care or force one into doing anything either!
Anne

[tatewise]

Anne, I am not sure every contributor to the Customise Source Pane? (14572) thread would agree.
The Source record boxes in FH are more varied and larger than the Sources For Citations pane Where within Source and Text From Source boxes. So it is more awkward to have extensive Citation text in those Sources For fields. Thus Method 1 'splitters' are better supported than Method 2 'lumpers'.

[AnneEast]

My point was really that there is surely no 'correct' way necessary to enter ones data and sources into FH. The right way is the way which suits the user and in that respect there are multiple variations. While this forum is incredibly helpful and I read it every day (!) it intrigues me that some users seem so tied up with 'doing it the right way' that I am surprised they find time to do any research. No criticism implied, each to our own etc.
Anne