Family Historian User Group

Gary,

I think we have discussed elsewhere my approach to invariant source citation elements from a splitter perspective. I use a combination of ORA and then, within FH, the Clone Any Record plugin (although I have found its use a bit cumbersome and would love to make some changes if I knew Lua!) and the built-in clone function with Automatic Source Citations.

Between these three, for me it’s not burdensome at all to be repeating the same information in different sources. I decided at the beginning of my project that I would rather deal with repeating information in split sources than having duplicate citations from lumped sources which may all need to be located and updated in the case of an error or change.

Speaking of your idea to use fields in a Repository record, how do you propose to use that to enter repeating information like the name of a parish record book, for example? A repository may be a record office or website, but surely you would not create multiple versions of one to represent each different collection as well?

Remember, you can have as many Repository metafields in a template as you like.
Even generic Source records can have two Repository links.
So you could have one Repository for the location and another Repository for each Collection.

Sarah;

I use the concept of a repository to describe the place where a group of records resides. So; there is one repository for each website, and for each physical place that data resides. I plan to store all the invariant data pertaining to that repository in its repository record. If I do need to change something in the "invariant data", I can change it in the repository record and all the citations utilizing the edited "pseudo meta-fields" will change independent of the template in which they're used.

So; my current French repository list is actually quite short and looks like this; Each of those repositories can have many collections, but I've found that the "law of diminishing returns" dictates that one not carry the paradigm further. Within a repository I may use several different templates, depending on the collections used. I feel that I can also clone my citations and the few fields I need to change are not that much of a bother. So; this means that all my templates can now be rendered as "Splitter" templates and gain the advantage of being able to reference any meta-field or "pseudo meta-field" in any part of the citation template format definitions.

Even as a Lumper, I always referenced at the document level and tagged that set of images with a unique identifier. I will likely use that identifier for the entry name in my Splitter source list. That way I have an easy reference to my stored images.

Now; because the templates are now truly "Splitter" templates from the viewpoint of FH7, I believe your concerns about dealing with Lumper sources is no longer an issue. One has gained some of the benefits of Lumped sources and retained all of the benefits so dear to the Splitter community.

Mike;

I understand what you are saying, but I want to tread carefully with that.
It may require a lot of planning to get things to work in concert, when juggling multiple repositories.
I will be setting up a dummy database and testing the water before jumping in with both feet.

tatewise wrote: ↑

12 Apr 2023 22:21

Remember, you can have as many Repository metafields in a template as you like.
Even generic Source records can have two Repository links.
So you could have one Repository for the location and another Repository for each Collection.

Gary_G wrote: ↑

12 Apr 2023 22:58

Mike;

I understand what you are saying, but I want to tread carefully with that.
It may require a lot of planning to get things to work in concert, when juggling multiple repositories.
I will be setting up a dummy database and testing the water before jumping in with both feet.

I am also curious to try this out in a test project. I've already entered quite a lot of sources with plain text for the website/archive and collection name (and associated details, like volume and archival reference). I'm wary of making things too complicated with repositories and at this stage I think I'm happy to enter the same data repeatedly where it's easy to do so with ORA and ASC. I just can't see the benefits outweighing the cons at the moment.

Sarah;

I haven't seen the initialism, "ASC", before. What does it represent?

My biggest concern about extreme optimization of data entry is that Calico Pie could do something that "breaks" it.
That is the main reason for me being careful that I don't get too "creative"... at least not right away.

I believe it means Automatic Source Citation, a method of data entry in FH.

See https://fhug.org.uk/kb/kb-article/autom ... e-citation

Or https://www.family-historian.co.uk/help ... tions.html