Citations in GEDCOM

PaulDesmondWhite · Post by **PaulDesmondWhite** » 11 Apr 2013 05:38

Hope there's some *very* superior knowledge out there somewhere...

Of course you can cite any source multiple times, via multiple citations, for a variety of 'facts' in your tree.

But think about (e.g.) a baptism record which happens to report the date of birth. Now you might just think a single citation (the transcription of which quotes both baptism and birth details) should support both baptism and birth events.

So... does the GEDCOM standard explicitly forbid *one citation* to link to *more than one event*?

Cards on the table: Ancestry allows/encourages exactly that.

ID:6889

AdrianBruce · Post by **AdrianBruce** » 11 Apr 2013 16:20

Yes - the GEDCOM standard does explicitly forbid *one citation* to link to *more than one event*.

To expand on this....
One can copy the 'citation' several times - that's what automatic source citation does, but that's several copies of the same 'citation', not one 'citation' linked to several facts. As I think you understand.

The 'forbidding' isn't in the form of a statement 'Thou shalt not...'. Rather it comes from the inherent structure of GEDCOM where the 'citation' is a part of the EVENT_DETAIL that the 'citation' justifies. As it's a part of that one EVENT_DETAIL, it can only link to that one EVENT_DETAIL. (Extend all that in an obvious manner for the other places where 'citations' can appear).

It's just the way that GEDCOM is written and software suppliers who want to match GEDCOM just have to run with it.

IT Speak Warning The effective (if not published) GEDCOM Data Model has entities for Sources and for Facts. There is a many-to-many relationship between Source and Facts - a Source can justify many Facts and a Fact can be justified by many Sources.

Any Data Modeller will realise that the many-to-many relationship is resolved by inserting an intermediate entity. That intermediate entity is the 'Source-Citation' and like any intermediate resolving entity would, it relates to one Source and one Fact. And only one. Ever.

I am beginning to think FTM and Ancestry both allow a single 'citation' to link to multiple facts. Though I try not to think about what Ancestry's online trees do, because they follow a different entity model from GEDCOM and I only ever load my GEDCOM into Ancestry.

There is no merit in trying to say one model is right and the other wrong. In IT terms, one 'citation' supporting several facts is actually attractive to me. However, it ain't how GEDCOM works.

AdrianBruce · Post by **AdrianBruce** » 11 Apr 2013 17:24

Incidentally, the different use of 'citation' isn't the only problem I have when trying to understand their software. Some apps also refer to Master Sources. This makes no sense to me - a Source is a Source is a Source.

However, I think that Master Sources are actually what I would refer to as Source-Records, whereas Sources are simply the source of something - these may be a page within a book, where the book has its own Source-Record. Of course, there may be many different pages of that book referenced in different citations - but still only one source record.

Post by **NickWalker** » 11 Apr 2013 18:13

If you consider the source to be the baptism record itself (which is what Ancestral Sources refers to as 'Recording Method 1') then that source can be linked to multiple facts (baptism, birth, parents occupations, residence, etc.). A transcription of the baptism record and other information can be recorded in that source. The citations don't really need to hold any information, they just provide a link to the source record. This is what I would recommend and is indeed the default method used by Ancestral Sources for census, marriage, baptism, etc. There isn't duplication of data in this instance.

If you prefer to have a source as 'Baptisms at St Pauls' and then link citations to this from every single baptism, birth, occupation, etc. then we do have issues with duplication of data - this can be somewhat mitigated by linking a single shared note to these citations, but this isn't a particularly neat solution. Ancestral Sources supports this as Recording Method 2.

PaulDesmondWhite · Post by **PaulDesmondWhite** » 11 Apr 2013 18:45

Thanks ever so much for that, Adrian.

As I sort-of-thought. So Ancestry/FTM is most definitely breaking the rules here, BUT IMHO in a very useful way if (like me) you're an aggregator.

So far I've been quoting a source such as London Metropolitan Archives, with 'Citation Where' as 'Bermondsey St Mary Magdalene, Register of Baptism, p71/mmg, Item 018 (Page 228, Entry 1818)'.

*** Splitting to the next logical level would have LMA as the repository, Source 'Bermondsey St Mary Magdalene, Register of Baptisms', Citation Where 'p71/mmg, Item 018 (Page 228, Entry 1818)'. But of course this still requires multiple citations for the baptism and birth dates.

If you go the whole hog with Source 'Bermondsey St Mary Magdalene, Register of Baptism, p71/mmg, Item 018 (Page 228, Entry 1818)', citations don't have any meaningful 'Entry Date', 'Where' or 'Text'! That seems to be going far too far, contrary to the spirit of references in general which tend to be to 'documents' like whole books, whole boxes or binders - needing a 'where' to locate the page or item in question.

I appreciate the last example has the 'virtue' that you can image the whole source, but I'd prefer to image that *part* of the source relevant to my specific citation.

All in all the method *** above is closest to the generic referencing of sources, and I'll definitely try to move more towards that. However...

1. That lets me keep citations short but I still need to create multiple citations to use the source in support of multiple 'facts'.

2. I can insert multiple images for a source, and even name them logically with the 'Where in Source' details, but there is no way within a given citation of linking to the *specific* image.

Presumably the current GEDCOM standard 'forbids' multimedia links on individual citations (Adrian?), in which case I accept all my problems are rooted in that outdated standard.

Let's admit, though, that Ancestry/FTM breaks it in a highly productive/efficient way, with important lessons for the 'Next Generation GED'.

Post by **NickWalker** » 11 Apr 2013 19:21

I agree that it would be better if GEDCOM/Family Historian supported the idea of a citation to multiple facts, etc. which is why the method I recommend is the only really suitable solution. As a database designer I couldn't bring myself to duplicate data in citations which GEDCOM really forces you to do if you want to use citations with data in.

To answer your question, Media can be linked to facts, citations or sources (and again Ancestral Sources supports all of these image links).

GEDCOM provides us with lots of facilities that are of no use to me (e.g. all the Latter Day Saints Temple Ordination facts, etc.). I just consider the fields inside a citation as being equally optional fields that I don't want to use.

AdrianBruce · Post by **AdrianBruce** » 11 Apr 2013 20:01

As Nick says, you can add a MULTIMEDIA_LINK to a SOURCE_CITATION in FH - in fact you can add multiple such links. And this is allowed by the GEDCOM 5.5 standard.

As for the advantage of doing it the FTM / Ancestry way, I would agree that it has its virtues. Even a splitter like myself will occasionally aggregate as I can't bring myself to have a Source-Record per entry in FreeBMD (say), so a marriage entry in FreeBMD could support a spouse's existence, a spouse's name and a marriage-fact - 3 facts (at least), so 3 'citations', so 3 copies of the text and 3 copies of the logic (in a note) why I think this is the right marriage.

PaulDesmondWhite · Post by **PaulDesmondWhite** » 11 Apr 2013 20:12

Hmm, thanks, I'll need a while to absorb all that Adrian/Nick.

But what's that about adding media to Citations? How?

Post by **NickWalker** » 11 Apr 2013 20:38

Using the Records window, if you expand a fact and then right-click on a source (which is actually a citation) under that fact you can link media to the citation.

PaulDesmondWhite · Post by **PaulDesmondWhite** » 11 Apr 2013 21:08

Oh, tricky, but that could actually work for me! Thanks, Nick.

PaulDesmondWhite · Post by **PaulDesmondWhite** » 11 Apr 2013 21:16

No, Nick, unless I misunderstood your instructions, this merely links to the source record itself.

Post by **NickWalker** » 11 Apr 2013 22:12

You must have misunderstood so my fault. Right-click on the Word SOURCE not the actual source. In the image below I've linked the 1901 multimedia (text in blue) to the citation by right-clicking where my arrow is pointing. The 1851 image is linked to the source itself which is shown in red.

And yes this is not obvious/easy/intuitive!

Nick

PaulDesmondWhite · Post by **PaulDesmondWhite** » 12 Apr 2013 02:35

Sorry to prolong this, Nick, but that's what I did and no, it doesn't link to the citation, rather the source itself. So even if GEDCOM allows links to citations, that's not what FH seems to provide.

delwoodman · Post by **delwoodman** » 12 Apr 2013 07:59

Paul:

Nick is right. The clue is in the colour-coding. The 1901 census reference shows in blue. If it was linked to the source record itself it would show in red, as does the reference to the 1851 census lower down.

When you right-click on the word 'Source' as Nick suggested you do, you should come up with a list of options such as 'where within source', 'certainty assessment' etc as well as 'Add multimedia object'. These are citation options and are quite different to the context menu you get by right-clicking on the source record itself.

Derek

delwoodman · Post by **delwoodman** » 12 Apr 2013 09:20

Paul:

A follow-up to my earlier post.

An easier way of seeing the practical difference of linking an object to a citation rather than to the source itself is to check the property box for the individual record concerned. If you link an object to the citation rather than to the source record itself, then in the source pane relating to the relevant fact you will find that the 'Show multimedia' button is greyed out. This is in contrast to the situation where the object is linked directly to the source record.

An example from my own file:

This contrasts with the situation where the iamge is linked directly to the source - in such cases, you can use the 'Show multimedia' button to move directly to the linked image.

Whilst conceptually, linking the image to the citation rather than the source itself appeals to me (not least because of the way I originally collected the underlying data and stored it in the software that I used to use before FH), there are practical drawbacks as discussed in other threads so these days for sources such as the census where it is useful to have on tap an image to refer to, I am moving to the 'one source per image' approach.

Derek

Post by **NickWalker** » 12 Apr 2013 18:57

Paul one of us has got it wrong and you immediately seem to assume it is me. [confused]

delwoodman said:
Paul:
When you right-click on the word 'Source' as Nick suggested you do, you should come up with a list of options such as 'where within source', 'certainty assessment' etc as well as 'Add multimedia object'. These are citation options and are quite different to the context menu you get by right-clicking on the source record itself.

And here is a screenshot of the context menu to prove the point:

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