* Ancestry, FTM, FH and workflow ~ Data retention

[Nick-V]

OK yes that explains their use of RESI.

Yes method 2, those are all sources. I exported FTM to FH and ran a source query then pasted.

[Nick-V]

This is the Sources screen to help elaborate on the different use of Citations in FTM.

Citations

citations.png (188.53 KiB) Viewed 4155 times

This sources screen has four panels:

1. On the left is a list of Sources.
2. Top middle are the Citations for the selected Source.
3. Bottom middle are the events cited by the Citation.
4. Right are the text details for the Citation (which can also be seen together with media by double clicking a Citation).

Note:

1. 1841 England Census only appears once.
2. The "List by:" feature top left is helpful allowing listing of All, Source Title, Repository or Person (so the Citations can be displayed are selected flexibly

The conceptual difference between FH and FTM appears to be in the definition of a Citation. Both have Events and both have Sources. FTM puts more emphasis on the link between the two (the Citation). A unique citation is identified by the Event/SOUR key combination (so they commonly have the same name). Objects are linked from the Citation not the Source (although SOUR, OBJE are also allowed). It appears that other citation records DATA, TEXT etc. in FH and FTM work in a similar manner (although the level needs checking).

[AdrianBruce]

My gut feeling is that I would agree that Ancestry uses Method 2 as a matter of course. If you look at many of the American genealogists' comments about citations, sooner or later you come across the concept of a "Master Source". Try and get a decent definition of "Master Source" - you can't. That's because "Master Source" doesn't exist in real life - any real-life definition just ends up pretty much equivalent to "Source".

On the other hand, that doesn't mean "Master Source" is a stupid concept - rather that it has meaning only in the genealogical / research process, not in real life. If you regard book and page as equivalent to "Master Source" and "Source", you get the analogy with data-collection and image(?).

And I think I would be right in saying that if you were to construct an entity-relationship diagram, then whereas GEDCOM would have SOURCE-RECORD, CITATION, FACT, then Ancestry, FTM and others would have MASTER-SOURCE, SOURCE, CITATION, FACT. And it's the MASTER-SOURCEs that appear in the Bibliography (something that FH doesn't do).

[PeterR]

Based on the limited amount of information in the above image, it seems that FTM has one Citation for each line on a census page, which corresponds to one citation per person; then there are Links to one or more facts for that person: birth, name, and residence in the above example. There seems to be a field for Citation text, which presumably could hold a transcription of the relevant line on the census page. However there does not seem to be anywhere designed to hold the transcribed text for the entire household which would typically involve several lines on the census page, and thus several Citations.

[Nick-V]

Thanks for the input Adrian and Peter.

Peter, yes I agree your description although looking again at the underlying data we're going to have to work out some terminology. I'll try to define some if I may...

FTM labels the middle top as Source Citations so we'll go with that. A Source can have multiple Source Citations. These are at INDI (e.g. line on a Census) or FAM level (e.g. whole marriage record). There appears no place to store text for a whole Census as a Source in FTM is (for example) the Census for England 1911 - only the Source Citations description (known as the Reference Note provides lower detail. Source Citations can have multiple Event Citations (my name for them) displayed middle bottom.

EDIT: Actually, the Reference Note is often duplicated at Source Citation level (at the top middle) therefore it represents the whole Census (you can add to it). It even specifies the line, for example:

Code: Select all

Class: HO107; Piece: 1197; Book: 7; Civil Parish: Hales Owen; County: Worcestershire; Enumeration District: 6; Folio: 23; Page: 8; Line: 16; GSU roll: 464208

An Event Citation is the lowest level of citation. Examples include INDI events such as NAME, BIRT, RESI, OCCU and FAM events such as MARR (which cause 2 people to show). An Event Citation is unique to an event/source although there appears nothing to prevent duplicates!

We might evolve this ...!