Family Historian User Group

I have read the previous postings on entering media but have to apologise that I do not understand and it is not working for me.

I have saved my media to my desktop and then managed to put it in the media folder for the appropriate person, so all looks well as far as that goes.

Problem - I have saved a marriage certificate for my grandparents now I want it to appear with the Fact of their marriage. Despite reading the previous postings I am lost.

Simple easy steps would be appreciated please. Many thanks - Mai

On the Fact tab of the property box, select the Marriage Fact, click on the media icon (show media) at the base below the fact list. Click Add Media For Fact... and select Existing Media and select the Marriage Certificate from the list.

You might want to also consider creating a source for the marriage using the marriage certificate. If you are intending to use sources, which we highly recommend.

One thing many do not appreciate is that putting the image file in the media folder does not attach it to any facts in your family tree.

Technically images are only attached to media records. This is a background process that can go unnoticed. It is then the media record that is attached to the fact.

You may notice this when following Jane's answer. In FH6 - which you profile indicates you are using (I don't have FH7, so it may be slightly different) - when you click on the media icon and then the button "Add Media for Fact" you get a choice:

• Insert from File
• Link to Existing Media Record

If you have only got as far as "putting it in the media folder", you need to select the first option. You then find that image file (I notice you are using multiple media folders, so you may have to click around) and select the image. You will then get prompted to in effect create a media record for that image. Since you have the image in the folder where you want to keep it you will select <Don't copy - link only> (otherwise you will start getting duplicate copies of your image).

Clicking "Add" will then create a new media record and attach the image to that media record and you will see "it" (the media record with thumbnail of the image) in the "Media for Fact" dialogue. That media record has then in turn been attached to the fact (in this case the marriage).

Fact [Marriage] < linked to > Media Record < linked to > Image [of Marriage Certificate]

"Edit" in the "Media for Fact" dialogue then gives you access to the media record - which is in effect a whole lot of detail that you can store about your image. You may for instance want to give the media record a more useful name so that it is easier to recognise if you want the image to support another fact (a marriage certificate for instance could support the father's occupation fact), you can then add that media record to the father's occupation fact. You add the media record through the second option in the bullet list above.

Hope that does not muddy the waters!

A separate question I would ask the OP is to check that when you say "media folder" you are referring to media folders in the FH Project structure? See the Knowledgebase for more about Projects - it does make life easier.

In file Manager you will see your project (e.g. Family Historian Projects/Family Historian Sample Project) which will have in it probably 2 folders (Public and Family Historian Sample Project.fh_data) and a confusingly similarly named file Family Historian Sample Project.fh_proj.

In Family Historian Sample Project.fh_data you will have your gedcom main data file (e.g. Family Historian Projects/Family Historian Sample Project/Family Historian Sample Project.fh_data/Family Historian Sample Project.ged) and a series of folders one of which is Media. Within this folder you can create whatever subfolders for your images that you would like.

If that is where you have "put it in the media folder" all is well as you are doing it the way that FH expects you to. If you have stored your media elsewhere outside the FH Project Media folder, things will still work but it will be more complicated (and backups can become problematic).

Many people do have sub-folders in their FH Project Media folder, but it is not really necessary - for FH usage. Once a file is attached to a media record (the first time it is related to a fact), the important thing is the Media Record - you can forget the image because from then on you will be attaching the media record to other facts.

Hence why you may want to edit the media record title to make it useful and recognisable. For instance "Marriage Certificate [GRO Ref]" may be less useful than "Surname1, Steve m Surname2, Robin @ St Pauls, London 1899-12-25". You can make up the naming format to suit your needs - but I find that if Surname1 is the name in the tree and Surname2 is the person marrying in, the media record is easier to find.

A side benefit of downloading all images directly into a single media folder is that if you start to download say an Ancestry Census Image, if you get the standard "File exists; Overwrite?" message, that indicates to you that the image has probably already been downloaded and you already have it, probably attached to a media record. So either you are duplicating a fact for an existing person (census fact in this case), or you have found someone else on a census image that you have already processed.

Thank you everyone. I will take time to read carefully and follow suggested steps.

Many thanks - Mai

Jane thank you - so simple!

davidf thank you for the further information. Once I was able to follow Jane's instructions and see how easy it was and what happened where, reading your further instructions then made much more sense to me. Of course further full understanding needed.

Thank you both.

May I add that before committing to a whole-hearted strategy of adding Source documents to Facts instead of Sources, please check how they appear in Reports.
For example, if you adopt the same strategy for Census pages, then each person in the household would have the same media image attached to their Census events.

Thank you Mike. Further reading required before I move forward. - Mai

tatewise wrote: ↑

19 Aug 2021 21:41

May I add that before committing to a whole-hearted strategy of adding Source documents to Facts instead of Sources, please check how they appear in Reports.
For example, if you adopt the same strategy for Census pages, then each person in the household would have the same media image attached to their Census events.

I wanted to clarify if your recommendation holds for citations. While working in RM I typically attached images of documents to both the fact and the citation, mainly because if I wanted to view the image, it was less clicks via the citation. RM7 did not print media in reports and the publishing features on RM8 are yet to be determined, so the potential issue you raise was not a concern. Getting to media images in the property box is so much easier in FH, do not see the need to attach document images to facts, but do have a question about attaching images to source records and citations. For example, if my source is a bound volume like deed records, I will typically attached an image of the binding to the source record. Citations created for specific pages will then have an image of the page attached to the citation. Still playing with various reports and settings, but would like to know if there may be other potential problems I am over looking.
Also, when I run a media report, I would like each media image to have a citation. I know I can create a citation for the media records which will be great for photographs, but will it cause a problem if I attach a document image to a citation and then copy and use the same citation to create a citation for the image?

Certainly, viewing Media images is one click of the Show Media button in the Facts tab, regardless of whether the Media is attached directly to a Fact, or to its Citation, or to the Source record for the Citation.

In Reports, the Report > Options > Pictures tab, Picture Type: Other governs the display of Media images attached directly to the Facts. Whereas, the Sources tab has Show Source Pictures and Show Citation Pictures tick options and Max Pics... settings that govern source citation Media.

Your example of a bound volume like deed records is a typical Method 2 'lumper' Source Citation.
I suspect you will also have Method 1 'splitter' Source Citations such as BMD Certificates where the Source record holds the image of the certificate and the Citation typically has nothing at all.
In a Report with both Method 1 and Method 2 sources, you must tick both the Show Source Pictures and Show Citation Pictures options to include all the specific page/certificate images and thus include the image of the binding for Method 2.
I don't know if that is a problem for you. It is recommended you investigate Report options & displays for a representative set of data before committing to a particular data capture strategy.

You talk about using "the same citation to create a citation for the image" but that is not possible as each citation is unique.
So that citation for the image won't have any Media attached unless you attach it.
BTW: The Media Report does NOT show Source Citations associated with the Media records.
See Wish List Ref 432 Source Citations for all items included in Reports.

tatewise wrote: ↑

28 Apr 2022 10:38

You talk about using "the same citation to create a citation for the image" but that is not possible as each citation is unique.
So that citation for the image won't have any Media attached unless you attach it.

Oddly, I think it is possible to add a source citation to a Media record where that source and/or citation is the one the Media is linked to. For example in the FH sample project, select the Multimedia record ‘Birth Certificate Ian Stephen Munro’. Then for this record cite the Source ‘Birth Certificate: Ian Stephen Munro’ (to which the Media record is linked). Now link the Media record to the citation and copy the citation and add it again to the Media Record. The source for the Media record is then the source to which the Media record is linked, and it is also linked to the citation. (Though I can’t think why such a circular situation would be required!)

BTW: The Media Report does NOT show Source Citations associated with the Media records.

Publish > Media Report includes the Sources to which the Media record is linked. But Publish > Record Detail Reports > Record Detail - Multimedia includes the titles of Sources for the Media record, which may be what is wanted.

Curtis made a clear distinction between citations and source records. So I assumed that last paragraph specifically referred to citations with images, and such images can be managed for each specific citation.

Regarding Reports it depends on what Curtis needs, which reinforces the recommendation to experiment with Reports before committing to a particular data capture strategy.

but Curtis said

will it cause a problem if I attach a document image to a citation and then copy and use the same citation to create a citation for the image?

and you then said

You talk about using "the same citation to create a citation for the image" but that is not possible as each citation is unique.
So that citation for the image won't have any Media attached unless you attach it.

My point was that when you copy a citation you do also copy the image attached to it. So you can end up with a circular situation where the source or the citation, or both, for the Media record can have that Media record attached to them. I think the point of his question was whether the circularity would matter, and to be honest I don't know. But to avoid the circularity he would need to create a new citation rather than copying an existing one which has the Media attached. (Or copy it and then delete the Media from the pasted copy.)

LornaCraig wrote: ↑

28 Apr 2022 12:04

... I think the point of his question was whether the circularity would matter, and to be honest I don't know. ...

And while experiments might (or might not, of course) show that circularity didn't matter today, my defensive programmer / designer mentality takes a sharp intake of breath and asks - what about it mattering tomorrow?

Yes, I am being pessimistic but stuff is at risk...

Yes, I love the Show Media button – and utilizing it was what lead me to a search through the forum and Knowledge Base for the cause of the duplicate images appearing – it took me a bit to figure out one was attached to the fact and one was attached to the citation.
Since starting with RM, I have my source templates structured using method 2 “lumping” although for a number of sources (mainly BMD certificates) there ends up being only one citation linked to the source. For consistency, I attached all images of the specific document or page to the citation and the fact.

The key takeaway/clarification from the answers here is there is no need to attached images of documents to the Fact (recognizing that I may still want a photo or other media attached to the fact) and there is enough flexibility in the report options to show the Source and/or Citation and/or Fact images to produce reports for different needs.

As I was trying to figure out what was going on with my duplicate images in the Show Media button, I noticed the ability to add a citation to the image in the Media property box and thought this would be a nice feature if I ever printed a scrapbook/Media Report and below each image would be a source/citation. I did play around with this a bit and I can confirm I was able to copy the citation with the linked image created in the Fact tab and then paste/copy it in the citation pane in the Media window by selecting the paste citation button. But I could not get the media report to show the source/citation and I did not know if I was doing something wrong or it had created the "circular situation" Lorna mentioned, and that was causing the problem and hence my post. Thanks Mike for the confirmation it was not user error as the Media Report does not show the citations.

After reviewing Mike’s response, I did play with the Media report some more to confirm if I could get a source/citation to appear in the Media report if I copied the text from the footnote template and pasted it in the local note field for the media. This worked, but probably won't use this approach. Although this looked OK in a Media report, I think this approach would cause other confusion because there is no way to indicate if the citation refers to the image or to other information that may be in the note field.

The other option I did not investigate is the difference between selecting [<whole record>*] or [Note*] in the ‘Sources For:’ drop down menu in the citation pane of the Media property box. I have plenty of other clean-up (like removing all the document image links to facts ) and do not anticipate the need to generate any Media Reports in the near future so for now, I will visit the wish list and then focus on other items.

Thanks Mike and Lorna for the input/guidance to help me better understand FH structure and clarify my workflow and data entry practices as I transition to FH.

LornaCraig wrote: ↑

28 Apr 2022 11:38

Oddly, I think it is possible to add a source citation to a Media record where that source and/or citation is the one the Media is linked to.

The very idea of adding a source to a media record illustrates our possibly confused attitude to images (other than portrait photos etc.)

Those of us who did any research in the days of 10M byte hard disks would not have space for images and our referencing would have been:

• Fact
  • Citation: specifically where in source X I got the evidence for this fact
    • Source: (full reference for X)

(Classic "academic referencing" - referred to in FH circles as "lumper's referencing")

Thus:

• Fact: "Joe Blogg's died on the Somme"
  • Citation: Edmunds, J. p42
    • Source: Edmunds, J., 1923, History of the Borsetshire Regiment, Brush & Gun Publications, London

Then when hard disks became bigger and online databases provided images, we started to "add references" to images we held - often by just retro-fitting them to the fact. If a fact was supported by more than one source (or by more than one citation to a particular source), just attaching an image to the fact was "not good enough" as it was not clear what the image was an image of.

Thus many argue that you should attach the image not to the fact but to the citation, so that it is clear what it is (in the above example it would be an image of p42 of Edmunds's History of the Borsetshires). Which is my current practice - a census fact (particularly of the harder to read 1841 and 1851 censuses) may be sourced to a specific page found on Ancestry (source 1) and on Find My Past (source 2). By attaching the murky image to the correct citation I know if I am looking at the Ancestry or the Find My Past image.

Counter argument. For many facts the "source" (where we got the evidence from) is actually the image (full splitter thinking!), and the image should consequently be attached directly to the fact. You could then argue that all the referencing and citations should be on the multi-media record (we don't want to get into editing the EXIF image data). Or you might try to remain moderately conventional and chose to add a citation and source to the multi-media record - acting as a proxy for the image (saying not where you got the evidence from, but where you got the image from)!

• Fact: "Joe Blogg's died on the Somme"
  • Citation for Evidence: Image of page from book with sentence highlighted
    • Citation for the Image: Edmunds, J. p42
      • Source: Edmunds, J., 1923, History of the Borsetshire Regiment, Brush & Gun Publications, London

cwhermann wrote: ↑

28 Apr 2022 15:58

The key takeaway/clarification from the answers here is there is no need to attached images of documents to the Fact (recognizing that I may still want a photo or other media attached to the fact).

Yes, my approach is that if an image “illustrates” a fact it can sensibly be linked to the fact (for example a photo of a wedding/baptism/graduation ceremony) but if it is an image of the source document for the fact it should be linked to the Source record.

By the way there are various ways of getting ‘source’ information to appear in a media report. Have you experimented with using the ‘note only’ options to record information about the ‘source’ of the image? On the Links tab of the Media record Property box, or on the same tab when viewing the media in the main Media window, if you click the icon to Add Simple Link (no frame) the last option is nothing (note only). This note will appear in both the Publish > Media Report (under ‘Note’ at the end) and the Publish > Record Detail Report > Multimedia (under ‘Annotation’).

Somewhat confusingly when you enter this note it appears in the Link Note box although it is not a link note and the option to Use Link Note as Caption is greyed out. (The Link Note, as the name suggests, is associated with each separate link to the Media record and is useful if you want different captions for different frame links to a photo, for example).

You could also use the main picture Note field to record information about the source. This field is included in the Record Detail- Multimedia report as Note. In the other Media report it is a bit illogical. It appears as the picture caption if you keep the default report options but it appears under Type if you untick the report option to Display Main Note as Picture Caption.

Sooooo much to learn and sooooo little time.