Family Historian User Group

I am try to rationalise my data and getting Sources correctly attached to individuals and families.
Of the 4 main ones, Birth, Marriage, Death and Census where is their recommended 'position'. These would be my guess', are they correct?
Marriage and Census attach to Family.
Birth and Death to the individual.
Documents would seem to be dependant upon their content and should attach to all individuals detailed in it.
I have put 'Photos of Places' with the individuals who lived there, but perhaps there is a better way?

Thanks

Marriage attaches to the Marriage Fact for a family.

Census attaches to the census fact for each individual in the census record (we don't recommend using Family census records for all sorts of reasons, including the fact that a family census record only 'cover's the two partners in a family, none of the children).

Birth attaches to the Birth fact for the individuals.

Death attaches to the Death fact for the individual.

Plus of course all those sources might be attached to other facts as well, depending on what information is in them.

Personally, I put photos of places with the Place rather than each individual.

Thanks Helen, I will have to do some restructuring.

Peter, we discussed all that in Source Documents (18227).
Please read back over that thread which explained about adding Source Citations for BMD Certificates and Census and how they relate to facts.

Yes, you are quite right I had not picked up on all the detail, too busy sorting out my other data.

For over 18 years using FH, all of my Birth, Baptism, Marriage, Banns, Death, Burial and Census etc images are linked to the Individuals concerned. The images are my sources. Works fine and is simple and fast to implement. Icons in my diagrams denote which images I have and and have not found for each individual. So I can see at a glance where I am at.

Thank you Trevor, but I suspect you are in a minority of one as that is quite an unconventional method. Sorry!

Mike,
Make that a minority of 2
60% of my sources are images (Census & PR), the remainder are mainly GRO references.
I use the KISS principle.

So just to be clear, you also add your Source images directly to the Individual record Media tab rather than the Source record Media tab?

My bad. Although images are my source, I don’t add any media to FH. I just refer to the ones on my PC.

So Trevor is back to a minority of one.

I fear that Trevor may remain in a small minority -- wherever you go on the web for advice (other than Trevor), the advice is to link Sources with their associated metadata (information about the source, which may include images) to Facts, rather than attach Source Images directly to Facts without any supporting metadata.

If you don't intend to share your information with others (or don't care about restrictions on sharing images) Trevor's approach of linking images to individuals may be easy and simple, but anyone who receives your data will be a little at sea. Where did the image come from? Which fact does it support? What can I do with it? What do I do if I can't read it -- where else can I look? Was it downloaded from flybynightgenealogy.com -- how do I know I can trust it?

Also, Trevor's method doesn't comply with the Genealogical Proof Standard or with advice from the Society of Genealogists.

You may decide that none of that matters to you now, but you'll find it awfully hard to retrofit if you don't know where your images came from, as a minimum.

Even if you don't care about 'best practice' (and many people won't), if you attach an image (without information about where it came from) to an individual, and then later generate a website, you might find yourself challenged by the the source of the image) because you don't have the rights to publish it.

I strongly recommend you link Images to Source Records, and then Source Records to Facts.

Helen, he is not linking Source images to Facts but directly to the Individual record Media tab as I described just now.
He even persuaded Nick Walker to add that as an AS option.

Mike, updated. I hadn't realised the 'full horror' for those of us who conform to standards.

tatewise wrote: ↑

09 Dec 2020 18:08

Helen, he is not linking Source images to Facts but directly to the Individual record Media tab as I described just now.
He even persuaded Nick Walker to add that as an AS option.

Well I added it as an option but also said I didn't agree with it and this is in addition to linking the image to the citation and only for 'method 2' users. So it is doing things 'correctly' in the background, but just adding an additional image link to the individual.

I do think we need to avoid the horror of demeaning someone's working methods.

Not everyone is an expert, users need to know they will be treated sympathetically. He probably is also working to standards. They may not be your standards, but they are his and if they work for him then they are pretty acceptable standards.

At the same time, lets encourage us all to work better though.

Trevor has been using FH for 18 years and is no novice.
Everyone is welcome to work with whatever method they like.
However, it seems unhelpful to promote to relatively new users a method that has been repeatedly commented on as being unconventional without adding that caveat.

Everyone is entitled to their own working methods (which are not standards if only one person uses them), but if they're going to promote very unconventional methods that are going to lead to problems in circumstances that don't apply to their individual situation, they ought to explain how they would overcome the disadvantages that don't matter to them, especially if their method is very idiosyncratic.

And those of us that can see the disadvantages would be remiss not to point it out.

As usual, the reply was (sadly) exactly what I expected, and misses the point completely.

Firstly I ended with

At the same time, lets encourage us all to work better though.

So yes its absolutely right to point towards improvements in working practice.

The "Full Horror" comment (even if in jest) was the object of the response. I never suggested that the author was a novice. What I was saying is that novices need to feel they will not be ridiculed. If an 18 year experienced person (a fact I did not know) is treated with this sort of comment, then how does a complete novice feel he or she will be treated on reading this.

My example was that whatever level of experience the person had, his standards were fine for him.

I've said before that this forum is the best forum I've ever come across for any product, in terms of speed of response, quality of response, and the willingness of (Mike in particular) to come up with the most detailed help possible - usually customised in great detail. It is an absolutely wonderful resource.

But the forum also has a few less welcome aspects. Let's leave it there and encourage users, not belittle them, and make the forum an even better place than it is today.

Thanks all for your comments, having started this thread I could perhaps end it.

FH is generally simple to use but, both complex and comprehensive. My take on this, having done it, is that it is very easy to start entering family data, creating useful family records that can be visualised into documents and trees. What it did not do for me was guide me through a way of standardised data entry so that I was 'forced' into adding my data in that manner. Backtracking and changing my data to that standard has not only given me a lot of work (thank goodness for lockdown time!) but taught me a lot about FH.
A thought for the future, could Beginner, Advanced and Expert FH settings be used to control the Menus and Forms presented and so acting as a guide?
I have also dipped into AS and it too provides comprehensive data collection but my experience of using it has been mixed, useful data additions but some data duplication down to my incorrect responses.

One thing I can fully concur with is that this is the most speedy, helpful and information filled Forum I know. The expertise available from some of its members (you know who you are!) makes it the best helpdesk.

As an aside I see FH7 has a Sources Templates feature, I have not yet explored it but perhaps that could be invoked when starting a new database?

Colin,

Trevor said earlier in this thread:

For over 18 years using FH, all of my Birth, Baptism, Marriage, Banns, Death, Burial and Census etc images are linked to the Individuals concerned.

.

Maybe the 'full horror' comment (made in jest) was a little over the line, but it perfectly expressed what I think of Trevor's approach (once Mike Tate clarified that I'd misunderstood what Trevor was doing).

My example was that whatever level of experience the person had, his standards were fine for him.

If electrician Fred turns up at your house and says "yep, I can rewire it but I'll follow my own standards... nobody else does it this way, but I prefer it" would you argue that their 'standards' are as good as anybody else's and tell them to go ahead? And would you say to a youngster looking for an apprenticeship: follow Fred's lead!

Genealogy is for most people a hobby, not a matter of life and death, and Trevor using his own methods does nobody any harm until he starts to suggest that others follow them.

When the Society of Genealogist, Strathclyde University, Bristol University, the Open University, Dundee University, Aberystwyth University, the Institute of Heraldic and Genealogical Studies, the Board of Certification for Genealogists, Pharos Tutors, a variety of books on the subject, and very many genealogy user groups all recommend recording information about Sources other than just an image, and linking each Source to the Facts that it supports, Trevor is very much out on a limb, and a limb on to which less experienced genealogists shouldn't follow him.

It's possible that Trevor's method is more than just linking images for common source types to the Individual concerned, but he never tells us the detail.

He may have ways of recording sources that don't exist as images (e.g. DNA or voice recordings or transcriptions of documents that existed 40 years ago but vanished in a hour clearance).

He may have ways of recording the reliability of a source ("this census might be her but I'm really not sure").

He may have ways of documenting where an image came from and what he's allowed to do with it.

He may have ways of recording sources when the image is illegible.

He may have ways of indicating the significance of a Source attached to an individual if it doesn't mention the individual at all -- e.g. a census record for an individual's brother and mother where the individual isn't present (but the address is where the Individual gave birth two months later).

Perhaps he uses the Note field in the Media record? Or copious Notes against Facts? Maybe he uses Source records for somethings and not others? Just attaching images to an individual doesn't address any of the scenarios above, and in 18 years he must have encountered them...

As an aside I see FH7 has a Sources Templates feature, I have not yet explored it but perhaps that could be invoked when starting a new database?

If you start a new project, and do Add > Source you get the option to create a 'generic' (old-style) source or a source from a template. If you choose the latter option, you'll be guided to add one or more templates to your project. (In an existing project, if you choose to add a templated source, you'll be guided to add templates as well, but mixing and matching the generic and templated sources needs careful consideration.

Sources and Citations in Version 7 (for Upgraders) and Sources and Citations in Version 7 (for New Users) may help.