Suppose you come across the year of birth of an ancestor, old Joe Bloggs, from say, a family chart or a gravestone. You add the year to your F.H. data, create a source for where the year came from and cite it in the birth event.
Some time later you find Joe Bloggss birth date and place, from a birth certificate say. So you add the date and place to the F.H. birth event for Joe Bloggs, create a source for the birth certificate and add a citation. Excellent, so you go away happy that you have added another piece of the jigsaw.
But wait; lets just look at what we have got here. We have a birth event with citation links to two sources. The citation of birth certificate tells us the full date and place came from the certificate, which is fine. But look at the gravestone citation, because its linked to the same birth event, that is also now telling us that the full date and place came from the gravestone, which is incorrect!
So, how is this to be handled or do we just ignore it?
We could create another birth event to keep everything linked exclusively 1:1, but that causes problems with data references for multiple instances (ie. [1], [2]
[n]).
I suppose the answer is to add the text from source or a note in the citation. This could be tiresome when using the data from a family chart, because, instead of using the convenience of auto-citation, you are now going to have to add individual text to the text from source or note box.
Im sure many of us have overlooked this issue.
What does anyone do to clarify this (or not)?
Tim
ID:1121
* Source/citations and additional data.
Source/citations and additional data.
I only add a second event if the sources give different dates for example if you work their year of birth out from the age given on a marriage certificate and it doesn't match the date on the birth certificate. I also have family bible dates that don't match birth certificate ones by a few days, I also put these as different events.
I don't think the GEDCOM standard allows individual sources for parts of the event, otherwise FH would already support it. If the dates match I do as you suggest and add the source to the existing event. I agree this does then look like all these sources gave all the information. I leave it to the reader to work out which of the sources confirmed which information. For instance I have one event for Birth Certificate and then use Text from Source to give all the details on the certificate, this is where date, place of birth and address came from. I have one event for each census year and use where within source, it is is likely to have given place of birth and an approximate date (if the place contradicts I use another event). Finally I may have family Bible which usually gives just the date.
I agree it is not perfect, but unless the number of sources on any one event become huge it should be reasonably obvious.
I don't think the GEDCOM standard allows individual sources for parts of the event, otherwise FH would already support it. If the dates match I do as you suggest and add the source to the existing event. I agree this does then look like all these sources gave all the information. I leave it to the reader to work out which of the sources confirmed which information. For instance I have one event for Birth Certificate and then use Text from Source to give all the details on the certificate, this is where date, place of birth and address came from. I have one event for each census year and use where within source, it is is likely to have given place of birth and an approximate date (if the place contradicts I use another event). Finally I may have family Bible which usually gives just the date.
I agree it is not perfect, but unless the number of sources on any one event become huge it should be reasonably obvious.