I am just evaluating moving from Brother's Keeper to FH. I have an existing database of 3000+ indviduals, many of which are sourced from census records, FreeBMD etc + collaborations with other researchers. Does anybody have suggestions on how to rationalise the data to take advantage of FH features. I have managed to tranfer the data successfully.
ID:2725
* Migration from Brother's Keeper
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GrahamJWood
- Platinum
- Posts: 30
- Joined: 28 Jan 2008 19:05
- Family Historian: V6.2
- Contact:
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Jane
- Site Admin
- Posts: 8440
- Joined: 01 Nov 2002 15:00
- Family Historian: V7
- Location: Somerset, England
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Migration from Brother's Keeper
Graham, that's not a program I have used. One thing I would suggest is try building a small sample file from scratch using some of the suggestions in the Knowledge Base and using GedCom Census, then compare the resulting information with that migrated from BK, that way you will be in a better position to know, what you need and some of what is possible with FH.
Jane
My Family History : My Photography "Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad."
My Family History : My Photography "Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad."
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jmurphy
- Megastar
- Posts: 712
- Joined: 05 Jun 2007 23:33
- Family Historian: V6.2
- Location: California, USA
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Migration from Brother's Keeper
I agree with Jane's suggestion to build a small sample file, in order to learn how to do data entry in FH. And I highly recommend Nick Walker's excellent add-on, Gedcom Census, for entering census data.
If you dislike the feeling you are duplicating your previous work, then choose some other task such as entering the data from another family whose data you might already have on file -- those living next door to your relatives from the census records you have on hand, or those people who have the same name but who are not your relatives -- noting as you go the factors that made you rule them out as relatives.
The virtue of doing a completely separate task while learning data entry is that you can become familiar with FH without worrying that you will be messing up your main files.
I especially recommend that you investigate the Auto Source Citation feature. When handling data from sources, I prefer to enter the source citation first, transcribe the source, and then extract the data from it.
Family Historian is the only software I examined which made it easy for me to work from the source material. (Just be sure to turn OFF the Auto-Source citation when you are finished with that source material! [oops] )
My suggestion would be, as you review your data, stay very focused on a particular type of data and/or a particular time period and/or place. So in my case, I would review ALL the 1930 US census records at the same time, working with all of the entries from one county at the same time. Then I would move on to the 1920 Census (and swear a lot), the 1910 Census, and so on, working county-by county each time.
However, since your database is much bigger than mine, you might choose one location to focus on. So within that locale, study each data set separately (for my UK records this would mean 1891 Census, then 1881, then 1871, etc, since so far I have no records from 1901).
This allows me to work with a more uniform dataset (for one county in the US, I could be looking at just one person's handwriting if the same clerk was responsible for copying the original records to make the Federal copy).
If you have not already done so, re-examine any general material you may have on your sources to make sure you are aware of limitations of the database. Again using an example from the USA, many people are not aware you get different returns of data depending on which site you use to search the Social Security Death Index -- find a single person, take their SSN, and plug it into World Vital Records, Rootsweb, Ancestry, Family Search, and so on, and there will be some differences in exactly what fields you get back in return. I know many users don't make effective use of the Repository features in their software, but this is one case where it really does make a difference how you collected the data.
Also take a look at using Named Lists -- these are very useful for keeping track of, say, all individuals for which you have not found census entries for a particular year, or women whose maiden names are not yet known.
As you consider each type of source, post specific questions and we'll be glad to discuss how we choose to deal with these things and why.
You may also want to look at the tutorial, but consider test cases from your own data as you go through it.
Hope this helps.
Jan
If you dislike the feeling you are duplicating your previous work, then choose some other task such as entering the data from another family whose data you might already have on file -- those living next door to your relatives from the census records you have on hand, or those people who have the same name but who are not your relatives -- noting as you go the factors that made you rule them out as relatives.
The virtue of doing a completely separate task while learning data entry is that you can become familiar with FH without worrying that you will be messing up your main files.
I especially recommend that you investigate the Auto Source Citation feature. When handling data from sources, I prefer to enter the source citation first, transcribe the source, and then extract the data from it.
Family Historian is the only software I examined which made it easy for me to work from the source material. (Just be sure to turn OFF the Auto-Source citation when you are finished with that source material! [oops] )
My suggestion would be, as you review your data, stay very focused on a particular type of data and/or a particular time period and/or place. So in my case, I would review ALL the 1930 US census records at the same time, working with all of the entries from one county at the same time. Then I would move on to the 1920 Census (and swear a lot), the 1910 Census, and so on, working county-by county each time.
However, since your database is much bigger than mine, you might choose one location to focus on. So within that locale, study each data set separately (for my UK records this would mean 1891 Census, then 1881, then 1871, etc, since so far I have no records from 1901).
This allows me to work with a more uniform dataset (for one county in the US, I could be looking at just one person's handwriting if the same clerk was responsible for copying the original records to make the Federal copy).
If you have not already done so, re-examine any general material you may have on your sources to make sure you are aware of limitations of the database. Again using an example from the USA, many people are not aware you get different returns of data depending on which site you use to search the Social Security Death Index -- find a single person, take their SSN, and plug it into World Vital Records, Rootsweb, Ancestry, Family Search, and so on, and there will be some differences in exactly what fields you get back in return. I know many users don't make effective use of the Repository features in their software, but this is one case where it really does make a difference how you collected the data.
Also take a look at using Named Lists -- these are very useful for keeping track of, say, all individuals for which you have not found census entries for a particular year, or women whose maiden names are not yet known.
As you consider each type of source, post specific questions and we'll be glad to discuss how we choose to deal with these things and why.
You may also want to look at the tutorial, but consider test cases from your own data as you go through it.
Hope this helps.
Jan
Migration from Brother's Keeper
I am in the same position as Graham - moving a similar sized database from Brother's Keeper to FH v.4
(I have already posted about this on the v.4 board)
My parcel arrived today, so I will be installing Family Historian later - so thankyou for the suggestions and tips in this thread
Off to look for GEDCOM Census ..........
Ann.
(I have already posted about this on the v.4 board)
My parcel arrived today, so I will be installing Family Historian later - so thankyou for the suggestions and tips in this thread
Off to look for GEDCOM Census ..........
Ann.