Family Historian User Group

I often spend a spare hour collecting people from the IGI and manually enter them from the christening records. It would help me if I could set all new sources to automatically set a particular repository (the one I use for IGI in this case, though the same applies when I troll through the Free BMD for records).

ID:2565

I use a standard source for IGI with the repository already in it. I then use this and put the individual details such as the batch number into 'where within source'

Irene B

Yes I agree with Irene that the IGI (and Free BMD if just using the index) is a source rather than a repository. Its actually not obvious, to me at least, what the repository is for the IGI as it is available on the web and in libraries, record offices, etc. so I leave that blank. I only use repository for records where it isn't widely available so i don't record it for the census sources either.

I would have thought the IGI's repository is the LDS since they are the owners of the website which mainly hosts it and which it was set up for.

However it all comes down to how you organise your citations/sources/repositories. Some have a few sources but many citations with the information mainly held in the citation, whilst others have many sources with few details in the citations. Gedcom is a bit limiting as sometimes I would like something like citation/source/source/source/repository!

Nick Walker said:
Yes I agree with Irene that the IGI (and Free BMD if just using the index) is a source rather than a repository. Its actually not obvious, to me at least, what the repository is for the IGI as it is available on the web and in libraries, record offices, etc. so I leave that blank. I only use repository for records where it isn't widely available so i don't record it for the census sources either.

Technically speaking, shouldn't the repository reflect where (i.e. the physical location) one actually found the information?

If you copied the information from a book, would you not list the actual library whose reference room you were in when you looked at the book (or checked out the book)?

Thus if I accessed the IGI via the web then FamilySearch.org would be the Repository (with the understanding being, the Repository is the set of mail servers on which the website resides), but if I went to my local FHC and accessed the actual microfilm record then the brick-and-mortar FHC would would be the Repository.

Or am I missing something?

Jan

I prefer to have one source for the IGI rather than a number of different IGI sources for each of the different libraries I happen to have looked it up in. I can't see a big advantage in doing this. I'd hate someone to feel they have to go to, for example, Preston Library to view information that they could find on the IGI anywhere. The only argument against this is that the IGI does have different versions but it would be difficult to track those, particularly as I assume the familysearch version is updated fairly regularly.

I use the repository  field very rarely and then only for unique documents I have found that are likley to exist in only one location. For example I have found the service record of an ancestor who served in the navy in the early 19C so I have recorded the National Archives at Kew as the repository of that source. Likewise the the 18C lease on the farm of another ancestor; the repository for that source is Hampshire Records Office. I would not bother to record repositories for widely availabe sources such as IGI or census.