* Source and citation

[HampshireLass]

I am fairly new to Family Historian and working in this type of format. I am using V7.

I had my tree on Ancestry and transferred it via a Gedcom.

I have studied the Fhug knowledge base which I find more straight forward than the help pages, and asked various questions on the Forum, and feel I am ready to add more records to my Tree on V7.

My Tree is purely for my own use although I will no doubt produce some simple reports/diagrams/charts

Simplicity is the key for me, and to that end I am struggling with sources/citations. I would like to ignore these altogether and create my own sources/citations in the notes attached to each Person's Facts in the Property box .

I realise this is not the reccognised way to do it BUT given what I have said above I feel more comfortable and in control by doing this. I just want to ask the following:-

If I use this method is it going to cause me any problems further down the line?

Each fact will still be properly sourced, but in my way.

Thank you

Sally

[KFN]

My first question is “what are you struggling with regarding source/citation”.

My comment about using notes vs the source/citation structure is that most reporting features use the given structure in reports to list out the places that information was found, while notes are less likely or harder to incorporate your sourcing in reports.

However if you never use these reports then this is less of an issue.

As a GEDCOM geek, I follow the Standard the best i can, but I do understand that sometimes the rules get a little cumbersome and I hear you when you say you want to keep it simple. So doing it your own way is not a bad thing and can be done!

Just be prepared for the event in time when you can’t get the data out that you put in because the report does not have a way to display something from a note in the section of the report or publication (chapter notes, end notes, etc.) that is customary for sourcing in that report type.

[ColeValleyGirl]

One example of what you'll be missing out on (which may not matter to you now, but there might come a day...): seeing all the individuals for whom you've cited a particular source.

[tatewise]

Hi Sally,
The thing you need to consider is how you are going to organise those Notes and attach images of the documents.
Try working through a few standard source documents such as Birth Certificate, Marriage Certificate, Death Certificate and Census records for 1939, 1921, 1911, 1901, 1891, etc...

On a Birth Certificate, there are details of the person being born and also the parents, often with their address and occupation.
On a Marriage Certificate, there are details of the bride & groom with their occupation, their fathers with their occupation, and two witnesses who are often relatives.
On a Death Certificate, there are details of the person who died with their occupation and often details of their birth.
On a Census, there are details of a whole family with their occupations and birth details.

So each document can yield many facts and involve several people.
Are you going to repeat the same Notes against every fact and where are you going to link an image of the document?

Source Citations offer a neat way of linking one such document to the many facts it yields.
Take a look at the Family Historian Sample Project which has many good examples of Source Citations.

Experiment with some Reports to see how your Notes and document images will appear. Does that provide the 'traceability' of where each fact was derived?

[ADC65]

I think the most important thing to do is to make sure you do record the source of any information, as so many people forget to do so when they are starting out (myself included). So the fact that you recognise it is so important is great, and I would say to do it in the way that is most comfortable for you. If you find this easiest by adding Notes, then that means you are more likely to actually record the information, so go for it.

The whole topic of sources and citations is probably one of the most discussed on this forum and you will find the whole range of opinions on what is "best". In my opinion, and it is only my opinion, the "best" method is what works for you.

All that said, I would actually recommend maybe having a look at just creating a few Generic Sources and seeing if they suit you. You can go the whole hog with Templated Sources and Data Entry Assistants, but I do believe there is a steep learning curve and (again, my opinion only) not a huge return for the effort above using Generic Sources.

EDIT: Mike and Helen have both made good points that I had pretty much overlooked.

[HampshireLass]

Thank you everyone for your replies.

I think I am on information overload trying to take everything in. Rightly or wrongly I have deleted all the sources that came across in my Ancestry Gedcom as one source often links to several events, creating anomalies, and I didn't want that.

I am going to create a small test project and just concentrate on creating sources using the Generic source method and see how it goes. Hopefully practise will make perfect.

Sally

[davidf]

If I use this method is it going to cause me any problems further down the line?

Each fact will still be properly sourced, but in my way.

Em, possibly, depending on which line you go down!

Against each fact in the fact note (the pane below the fact window) you can write what you like and if you are used to "academic referencing" (a formal comprehensive consistent format that enables you to get back to the actual "thing you looked at" be it a page in a book, a document at a record repository, or a Census Schedule on Find My Past etc.) you can put such a reference in there.

But you will only be able to manage your references manually and you may find that some of your reports look "a bit of a mess" because of them printing out the fact notes - yet you may not wish to inhibit all the fact notes to get tidy reports. (But see the use of so-called Privacy Brackets "[[secret text]]" - a work-around which may help you inhibit detail that you do not want in reports.)

If you are using FH as a "repository of facts that you have found" so that you can use it for personal reference when writing your own Family Histories outside FH, the above possibly does not matter.

Others have made the point about the consequences if you later decide to get more sophisticated in your use of FH.

If you enter your notes in the fact note area in a structured manner (one item per line, with labels and values consistently delimited viz"Label: Value;"):

Code: Select all

Source: Class: RG13; Piece: 2902; Folio: 143; Page: 12;
Age: 31;
Marital Status: SIngle;
Relationship to Head of Household: Daughter;

It won't look very pretty, but you will be able to use FH functions as another work-around to pull out the sort of detail that would normally be held in sources and citations - some on here can give you assistance with the function GetLabelledText.

I would strong suggest looking at Sources and Citations in the Sample Project and then just try (with V7 Generic Sources?) entering a few birth certificates, a few parish register entries and a few census records and see whether you still think it is not worth while.

[davidf]

... as one source often links to several events, creating anomalies, and I didn't want that.

A Census Schedule (a Source) will link to multiple "events" because it gives you evidence of:

• Location on night of Census
• Age (and hence approximate year of Birth)
• Birth Place
• Marital Status
• Occupation
• Relationship to Head of Household
• etc.

Is that what you don't want - or are you understanding sources in a different way to me?

[HampshireLass]

I may not have explained myself very well.
Importing from Ancestry I found several things I didn’t want eg
Index only sources, many of which are wrong eg I am working mainly in Hampshire and their baptism and burial indexes are bad.
OR
I now have a screen shot of the actual register , so I don’t need the index now
etc, etc
Ancestry cite themselves as the repository but I want to use the original source of record.
I full accept that census records will link to many facts.
As I said originally I want to keep things as simple as possible, and from the replies I have received I realise I need to persevere with sources.
By deleting and starting again it will give me the opportunity to learn a set method.

Sally

[Gowermick]

At the risk of upsetting the purists, I too keep it very simple!

Take baptisms for example. I enter Baptism facts such as date, place and church. I download the image to my PC, (named appropriately), so my generic source simply states Parish Register Baptism Image as a title, with no further text added.

I then copy this source and use it to source Name, Date and place of Christening, and if the birthdate and place of birth is also shown, I copy the source here too. I don’t add the image as a media file for the individual, so as to keep the Gedcom as simple as possible.

NB If I can’t find an image, my source says something like Findmypast Kent Baptism index, nothing more!

That’s it! I use the same source wherever possible.

An added benefit of keeping it simple like this, is that I can quickly search for those individuals whom I don’t yet have a baptism image.

NB I use to include parish name in the source title, but found I had to create a separate source for each parish, which just added complications when choosing the correct source. So the simple Parish Register Baptism Image can be used for any Baptism, whatever the Parish.

[jimlad68]

Simplicity is the key for me

YES.

I used your method of putting the detail "in the notes attached to each Person's Facts" for many years, the only problem being repetition.

I then discovered the next simplest and more efficient method, Generic Source method 1 made quicker with Ancestral Sources.

I am going to create a small test project and just concentrate on creating sources using the Generic source method and see how it goes.

Excellent idea: When I moved to FH from TMG I spent months experimenting with both the best import method and my new data structure, even little things like naming conventions can save time later.

[Little.auk]

I would endorse Jimlad68's suggestion of trying the Ancestral Sources Plugin for FH.

Say you have a census image for a family with nine children, then using notes fields means eleven entries to make, a bit time consuming even using cut and paste. And the image needs to be linked to all of the as well!

I found the Ancestral Sources Plugin very easy to learn and it really simplifies data entry. Once I had got used to it I took just 2 or 3 minutes to complete the 11 person Census Entry, and link it and the relevant image, to all 11 people in one go.

Ancestral Sources covers Births, Baptisms, Marriages, Deaths, Burials and Censuses, and there is an Ancestral Sources group on the forum if you have any problems.

[NickWalker]

I would endorse Jimlad68's suggestion of trying the Ancestral Sources Plugin for FH.
....
I found the Ancestral Sources Plugin very easy to learn and it really simplifies data entry.

Thanks for the kind words and recommendation! I know this will sound slightly pedantic, but Ancestral Sources is not a plugin. It is a totally separate program to Family Historian although it integrates well with it because it works with the same file and data added in AS is available when FH reloads. There is also an Ancestral Sources plugin but that is a fairly simple plugin that can be used to run the Ancestral Sources application directly from Family Historian.

[HampshireLass]

Finally,Thank you everyone, I have been away on unexpected babysitting duties!. I am having a good look at Ancestral Sources and hopefully will be able to make it work for me.