Citation Formats

BCourtney · Post by **BCourtney** » 31 Dec 2008 01:43

Does anyone share my concern that FH does not impliment the source citation formats (Evidence! Mills) that are quickly being adopted amongst all genealogy software? I'm afraid of investing my next X years into FH only to have to 'rewrite' all my citations in a new format. This is from the perspective that each piece of data is represented or supported by 10-20 citations from a variety of sources. At the same time I appricate the simplicity and control of the records and the visualization on the diagrams.

ID:3280

Post by **ColeValleyGirl** » 31 Dec 2008 08:09

Sounds like something for the wish list... I'd vote for it, but not at such a high priority as other items.

YouTube · Post by **Jane** » 31 Dec 2008 09:07

I have obviously missed what you are looking for?

FH can support as many citations on any give piece of data as you require.

Is it simply you are looking for the text formating of the citations?

Post by **NickWalker** » 31 Dec 2008 09:24

I did some Googling for Evidence and Mills and it appears this refers to an author Elizabeth Shown Mills who has written books on source citation.

This link should help to explain a little about what BCourtney is talking about

http://www.thinkgenealogy.com/2008/12/1 ... r-award-1/

Post by **ColeValleyGirl** » 31 Dec 2008 11:21

I've found the Shown Mills books useful, both in helping me to think how I want to handle sources and as reference material when I have a particular type of source to cite. I use Notes associated with each Source or citation to record the relevant information for which FH doesn't make explicit provision.

I do suspect her approach is being adopted as a standard because she's the only person who has actually documented such a thing in any depth (which is not to denigrate it in any way); and I also suspect that its rigour isn't equally attractive to all family historians... So I wouldn't support having the standard enforced in FH (or anywhere else) but only enabled.

BCourtney · Post by **BCourtney** » 31 Dec 2008 20:48

Thanks for the responses. Jane I agree that FH can 'accomidate' a simple author publisher format of my choosing. However FH provides no source 'format' templates, every source entry has to be checked ... every time ... to make sure that it is consistently entered every time the exact same way. I agree with the observations that different people have different levels of source documentation that they want to provide, however, my personal opinion is that genealogy without sources is simply mythology. Why would we invest hours in work that no one else can recreate in the future? For those of us wanting to communicate more sources than the actual conclusions that we have reached templates are required to ensure consistent data entry. Similarly one could argue that FH not enforce any particular storage format for any data at all, and in that case we are left with a word processor, and that is exactly why we have a property dialog for persons and families now ... to ensure clear and constistant data entry, for better or worse. Simply because GEDCOM does not support the concept of consistent entry of source information, should preclude it as being a feature of the software. Good genealogy in the future will likely be source centric.
Thanks for all the feedback.

Interesting model also:
http://www.thinkgenealogy.com/2008/07/3 ... version-2/

ChrisBowyer · Post by **ChrisBowyer** » 02 Jan 2009 08:08

I think this argument's getting muddled. It's not about whether you should record sources, but whether you should record them in some particular way.

To the former, yes of course, and it would be nice if FH encouraged this more from the start. My personal objective is never to enter anything without also entering 'says who'.

To the latter, well, maybe, but I'd rather make up my own mind as I go along about how I record (and perhaps more to the point) how I evaluate the various bits of information ranging from mythology, to official certificates(not always accurate), to facts (but remember, nobody really knows their own date of birth... nearly all historical sources are second-hand).

There's plenty of (conflicting) advice available on this, and I'll pick and choose according to what seems appropriate to the case in hand, but it's insulting to be told that one way is 'just mythology' whereas another isn't.

ChrisBowyer · Post by **ChrisBowyer** » 02 Jan 2009 08:18

And as an afterthought, if 'X' in 'my next X years' in your first post is greater than 2, it's a fair bet there will be another fashionable 'standard' to argue about.

Post by **ColeValleyGirl** » 02 Jan 2009 10:59

Chris, as is often the case, you've made my points much better than I made them...

RalfofAmber · Post by **RalfofAmber** » 02 Jan 2009 16:22

I've been trying to follow this chain of discussion with mixed success. Is the idea that citations should be captured in a standard way and then presented in a standard way depending on the media?

On browsing the web I note that the 'Evidence' approach seems to speak about both structure and presentation - I would have thought these were best kept separate and it is reasonable to have a standard way of capturing for example and IGI entry. However, the potential number of sources must be higher than can be catered for in advance.

If the idea is allow the source entry screens to be able to be customised I think that has merits - I don't use many of the fields (e.g. on repository), however I wonder if this takes us to the perennial chestnut of the limitation of gedcom 5.5?

Post by **NickWalker** » 02 Jan 2009 16:54

My very limited reading around this implies that it is more to do with how the references for the source are recorded, e.g page number, repository, date recorded, town, county, etc.

Post by **ColeValleyGirl** » 02 Jan 2009 18:50

Shown Mills recommends standard formats for (1) creating entries in a source list, and (2) citing (or referring to) those sources to support a 'fact'. She provides 'model records' for a very wide variety of source types, including online resources, written resources, images, artefacts, transcripts, indexes and databases, etc. -- and addresses all the 'normal' family history sources that I can think of, plus basic templates for 'others'.

For example, the basic template for an online resource in a source list includes:

Item Author
Item Title
Item Type
Website Creator or Owner
Website Title
URL
Date consulted

and a source citation adds:

Citations Details (i.e. which piece of the website specifically is being used to support an assertion).

It's a comprehensive and well-thought out system, but not a standard (unless a de facto one, as the only option in that space). I don't know enough about GEDcom to know whether it would be in conflict with the perennial chestnut, as Tony calls it.

GladToBeGrey · Post by **GladToBeGrey** » 07 Jan 2009 10:44

Perhaps, then, 'Evidence Explained' (pub: 2007, reprint 2008) would be the more appropriate reference, as it updates 'Evidence!' (pub 1997), inter alia, for 'records created by the new digital media: Websites, Digital books and journals, DVDs, CDs, Audio files, Podcasts, E-zines'. Until it, too, is superceded ... no 'standard' can ever remain fixed, or it dies.

That being said, I don't have a copy of the book nor, therefore, have I done a comparison between it and GEDCOM/FH's source handling, but from what I've read thus far as a result of this thread I strongly suspect it adds another line to the argument, oft-rehearsed elsewhere on this site and the mailing list, that GEDCOM 5.5 is increasingly out-of-date ...

jmurphy · Post by **jmurphy** » 08 Jan 2009 17:49

Tony Jones said:
I've been trying to follow this chain of discussion with mixed success. Is the idea that citations should be captured in a standard way and then presented in a standard way depending on the media?

That sums up the problem nicely. As you say, there are two different problems involved.

Problem #2 is the 'style sheet' issue -- the form in which one presents the citation in a report. In that respect, some sections of Evidence (and its companion laminated 'cheat sheet') are the genealogists' equivalent of The Chicago Manual of Style or other such reference works.

Problem #1 is making sure you record all that information in the first place, so that if someone else has to re-visit the historical record in your citation, they can find it again themselves.

(I haven't seen the new volume yet -- only Evidence and the reference sheet with the examples.)

Practically speaking, I know from experience that if the software is too strict about following a 'standard' manner of citing sources, the result can be so complicated that the user just says 'to heck with this' and neglects to put in material about sources altogether.

In my mind, software should encourage good practice by making it easier to do things the proper way, rather than more complicated. Thus after trying several different programs, I chose FH for its auto-source citation feature.

Jan

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