Family Historian User Group

I thought I had this figured out and then my wife and I decided to move. This resulted in my taking an 18 month break in performing any serious work on my family tree. I only mention this as I apologize for any duplication with past discussions. So here is where I am at today.

I have all my sources in older applications. I have spent the last two years migrating and cleaning up my data. Now I want to add all my source data.

I have standardized all my citations using Evidenced Explained. (EE).

From what I remember, the next question I need to make is do I adopt a splitter, lumper or hybrid methodology. To complicate the answer to this question is the concern about how the data is stored and exported between applications. If memory serves, like almost every genealogy software, FH is more focused on data storage compliance using the GEDCOM standards. The big take away for me seems to be that as I customize FH to be more EE compliant, the farther I will take my family tree from being more easily converted to GEDCOM and then imported to other apps. Furthermore, from a long term perspective while I am committed to FH7 at present, this could change in the future and thus being able to export and import data would be important.

Here is what I would like to do with my citation data
1. I want to create a custom collection where I can create my own Evidence Explained source templates.
QUESTION: I thought I saw that someone had already created a EE collection that can be imported? Does anyone know where this might be available?
2. I prefer to lump my citations into sources especially for things like vital statistics, census data, and databases. I am open though to splitting less often used sources like blogs, etc...
3. I am already having to redo my source and citations as they did not import from my prior genealogy software. I would prefer not to do this again. I would also like this data to migrate into other software that I use to post my family tree for public consumption, ie ancestry.com.

How would you suggest I proceed.

One of the standard source template collections is EE compliant (the Advanced collection). Howvever it might be more splitter oriented than you want, but serve as a basis for customisation.

Export considerations are discussed at Exporting Templated Sources.

One take-away from recent discussions here is that if you wish to use Evidence Explained style Source Lists (known as Bibliographies in FH), then the contents of the Source Lists must appear in the Source Records and not in the Citation-specific Details.

This is done in the Source Template Field Definition by ensuring that all fields needed in the Bibliography have "Citation-Specific" UNticked.

So don't lump your Source Records to bigger lumps than you want in your Bibliography / Source List.

(Hope that makes sense as I'm not a template user but I can see that some people have issues with this because they've been used to software that behaves differently.)

Please check that you have correctly understood the Method 1 'splitter' and Method 2 'lumper' strategies.
See FHUG Knowledge Base Citing Sources: Method 1 and Method 2 for details.
Adrian makes a good point regarding Bibliographies.

You said you prefer to lump citations into sources for census data which is the opposite of our usual advice to users.
See FHUG Knowledge Base Recording from a Census Record for details.
If the Method 2 'lumper' strategy is used then many of the census details are duplicated in each Citation for every household member and it is more difficult to locate all the household members from the Source record.
Census records have some of the strongest reasons for using Method 1 'splitter' strategy to avoid that duplication.

Also, when exporting to another product, having many details (duplicated) in each Citation may make the migration more complex than having most details in just the Source records.

Census records have some of the strongest reasons for using Method 1 'splitter' strategy to avoid that duplication

Or to put it another way - census records illustrate most clearly the limitations of GEDCOM/FH compared with products like RM and FTM that manage lumped census sources with ease.

We take the rough with the smooth though, and FH has by far the better package of options overall.

If you are comfortable writing your own citations then you may wish to consider using a pair of simple Freeform Citation Source Templates that I wrote. Please note that they are for Family Historian V7.