* A question of presentation

[mezentia]

I have just completed the transcription of a Cause in the Court of Chancery, dating to 1849, in respect of the administration of the estate of an intestate. A line by line transcription now occupies 4 pages of landscape A3 paper in a very small font. I have subsequently re-formatted the transcription to A4 portrait, with line numbers. Schedules contained within the original have been rendered as tables, and where in the original they were side by side, they are now placed one schedule per page. A list of names mentioned (some 25 or so) has been created with page and line references. A list of related documents referred to in the original has been similarly created. A list of legal definitions has been created. As there are some interesting as well as inaccurate statements in the cause, a series of discussion points has been created to further expand on these points. I now have a 54 page document relating specifically to this one source.

I have created a source citation with the original images as attached media. Normally I would put my transcription as text from the source, and where the source is referenced I would put any observations, notes, etc., in the text associated with the relevant event/attribute. However, in this case, is this the best approach? If I just add my Word document as a media file attached to the source, then the contents will not show in a narrative report, but if I put the contents of the Word document into associated text, then is 56 pages (and possibly more as research continues) too much? I would be interested to hear of possible other approaches to this situation adopted by other people.

I do have actually another case where there are some 26 pages of original documents involved. Continuing research into this one is currently translating into a document in excess of 500 pages, and that is without tables of contents, tables, and figures; index and bibliography (I have already broken Word with this one ). This one, I think, will require creation of a Book, but again, how to contain the information within FH.

[tatewise]

Please provide a bit more explanation of your objectives.
Do your Reports, including Narrative Reports, usually include the Text From Source and Media Images of all Sources?
Who is the intended readership of your Reports? Do they need such details?

If the full details are not required except for your own consumption, then consider these options:

• In the Text From Source provide a summary to be included in Reports.
  Enclose the full details in [[ privacy brackets ]] so they are excluded from Reports unless you tick Inc. [[private]] Notes
• Provide one or two Media Images to be included in Reports.
  All the other Media Images can be marked with Exclude from Reports.

[mezentia]

My primary objective is always to try and develop as complete a biography as possible of each individual in my project. As I normally share my research via narrative reports, it is within narrative reports that I would normally expect to present the information such as contained in this particular court case. The recipients of the narrative reports are not always family history researchers themselves, but are nevertheless interested in the results of my research. I realise that this to an extent answers my own queston in that if I want to pass on the information I have found, then it should go in a relevent note field, but I am also aware that on occasion the detailed information/discussion is best put in an addendum with a brief synopsis within a note cross-referencing the more detailed account elsewhere. I doubt, however, if a wish list item that allows the content of a word-processing document to be appended to the end of a narrative report as an addendum with approprate hyperlinks would garner many votes, and I am aware that this is something that can be otherwise achieved with manual editing of the report.

In this specific case, the court case identifies and confirms a series of familial as well as commercial relationships, and makes statements that are factually incorrect. The commercial relationships are interesting on their own from the point of view of local history, but these relationships also involve other family members too, so are of interest to others whose main interest is the family aspect of the research. I usually include text from source in my reports, and I've used FH long enough to understand the use of [[...]] and exclusion/inclusion of media images.

But my question still remains, what techniques have others used in presenting research when an event/attribute is supported by a source that contains considerable volumes of documentary source material and discussion? As my focus is very much on research (too much to do and very little time to do it), I have experimented little with creating Books or Family Tree CDs/DVDs; might these provide a more suitable method of presenting my research than simple narrative reports?

[ColeValleyGirl]

Are you primarily interested in paper-based 'publication' or web-based or both. If web-based, you could (depending on how you generate your website) have the word document as a media file and provide a link to click to view it.

[RS3100]

I don't use templates sources, but I do have a Court of Chancery case and several other lengthy and/or convoluted events in my project.

What I have done is to attach all the original document images to the source, as well as plain text transcripts of those documents.

I also create a summary or more detailed notes, as in depth or otherwise as I judge to be required, and either insert that within or use it to completely replace the fact sentences for the relevant fact.

I have a custom "Misc"(ellaneous) fact that I use for many of these situations, in which I can customise the fact "title" as it appears in the property box for the individual(s) involved; and the source notes inserted into or comprising the fact sentences, and hence included in narrative reports, are in some cases several A4 pages and many paragraphs in length.

It works for me.

[LornaCraig]

I have a large collection of documents (a long diary transcript, telegrams, letters, newspaper cuttings, photos…. ) which all relate to the same topic. I have assembled these into a single free-standing book. The total is 235 pages long, and I have cited this book as a single source in FH. A PDF copy of the book is attached to the source but for the purpose of narrative reports I have a single fact with a one page synopsis in the fact Note, referring to the book. This synopsis appears in narrative reports.

I am building collections of narrative reports into books (with a lot of heavy editing in Word), and these books are also saved as PDFs. The various PDF books, including the one which is a jumbo Source, are saved alongside my FH project and of course backed up in various places. Because the PDF Source book is linked to the Source in the project it will be accessible there for anyone who wants to take over the project one day (I can always hope!) but it’s also accessible outside the project along with other narratives, for anyone who might be interested in reading the stories but wouldn’t go digging in the project.

I realise your case is slightly different because your long source is not so much a story as a reference book, but the same approach might work.

[mezentia]

Aplologies for the late response (sometimes family just gets in the way of family history research! ), and thank you to all who have suggested possible ways to solve my issue. I'll take some time to review all the comments. I have tried using Web-based output in the past, but I found I spent so much time post-processing the output (mainly because I was not always sure of what I was doing as I'm not an experienced HTML coder) that I soon gave up. I must admit that I do like your idea, Lorna, and that is one I will certainly look into further, particularly in respect of the very long project I am still working on.