Family Historian User Group

Hello,
I have a large amount of B/M/D 'data' originally from the FRC which I wish to add to the people within Family Historian each with an image of the record.
It consists of the usual data i.e quarter, volume, page, district plus age at death, mother's maiden name etc dependant on whether the record is a birth , marriage or death.
Any suggestions as to how I would approach this would be appreciated.

Thanks Tom

ID:4100

Everyone will have their own way of doing this. What I do is have three sources; GRO Birth, Marriage & Death indices. Whenever these sources are cited by events I put the reference (e.g. GRO Ref: 1980/q3 Truro 21 414) in 'where within source' in the citation and (if I remember!) the age at death/date of birth/mother's maiden name in the 'text from source'.

Thanks Patrick,
Your method was the first that came to my mind, but before I committed myself, I wondered if anyone used alternative methods?

Tom

The other method is to have a source for every record and put the reference details in the source record's publication information field with the actual text field holding the data from the FRC record. This is the better method if the record contains multiple pieces of data such as birth date, mothers maiden name, place of birth as you create one source record and attach it to the three pieces of data. It also means that you only need to input the reference details and record's data once rather than repeated in each citation.

If you don't want to put a source against each piece of data then creating one generic source for FRC data works just as well. Here you would then need to put the data from the FRC record into the citation's text from source field.

HTH

Jon's right that the seperate source for each entry is formally speaking 'better', but we use Patrick's method too. Duplicating the citations is not really a problem (you can always copy and paste, or type it once and auto-cite). The main disadvantage of the other approach is that your list of sources on a report is likely to be enormous. We do the same for censuses. One source for (for example) '1841 England Census' with details in Where Within, Text From and Notes as necessary.

I don't see the fact that the method I suggested has a disadvantage with loads of source records. The number of source records is beside the point.

What is more important is the quality of the sourcing. Either method can produce the same quality of sourcing.

The single source method means less maintenance of the source records with a slight increase in duplicated data in the citations.

The multiple source record method means more maintenance of the sources (eg. naming) with a decrease in the amount of duplicate data in the citations. The later method also means that if you need to correct a source's details, you only need to do it once and it becomes easier to identify the fields which use a particular source.

Tom mentioned that he wanted to add images to these records.

Using Patrick's method, how do you attach images for separate events?

Regards,

maggie

Attaching the images is a major factor for me, so whatever I decide will need to have that.

Tom

You can attach media to citations as well as to sources, but if you want to attach the Index images then it's probably easier to have a source for each entry, that way if you want to replace them with Certificates at some point you can.

Am I missing something? How do you add media to a citation as opposed to a source?

It's not possible from the property box. In the record window you can add an image to a citation by right clicking on the word 'Source' (in the tree structure part of the record) and selecting 'Add Multimedia Object'. To add an image to the actual source record itself you right click on the name of the source (to the right of the 'scroll' icon) and select 'Add Multimedia Object'.

HTH

Dear all

The original query by Tom referred to a large number of BMD records obtained from the GRO. I too have that problem.

The suggestions related mainly to where to put the source, but the more interesting question is how to automate the process of transferring the data from, eg, a spreadsheet into FH. That is say, without tyoing each one in again.

eyejay

Hello Eyejay and everyone,
You have made an interesting point, which is continuing to take up my time here. How do I get the FRC data into FH from a spreadsheet ( a lot! ) I was thinking how could I automate it? Anyone have any ideas?

Tom Beckham

Sorry pressed the wrong button...the second posting is a fuller version of my reply!

Tom Beckham

If it was me, I'd use a scripted editor (like Ultraedit) to generate the appropriate GEDcom text elements and insert them into the GEDcom file, but I happen to have bought a copy of Ultraedit for other purposes.

TomBeckham said:
..I was thinking how could I automate it? Anyone have any ideas? I wonder how thw Census program writes the data into the gedcom....what language?
Tom Beckham

The language used is largely irrelevant. Any programming language should be capable of producing a text file, which is all the GEDCOM file is. Assuming your spreadsheet is Excel then you could use the built in Macro programming language (Visual Basic for Applications) to generate the text file that you need.

Probably all you would be able to manage practically is to create a separate source record for each entry, assuming they were all logically recorded in the spreadsheet. Just writing something to create the sources wouldn't be too difficult if you know what you're doing. Incidentally, the new application I'm developing to replace Gedcom Census will eventually also deal with BMD records though there are no plans currently to allow import from a spreadsheet.

Are your records just lists of (taking births as an example):
Quarter, Year, Surname, first name, District, Volume, Page?

Hi Nick,
I was hoping you would join in the chat. The details are exactly as you mentioned with the addition of relevant fields for the marriage and death entries.
I found the census program made things a lot easier when entering data in FH and wanted to find something similar for the BMD entries of which I have a lot to bring in to FH (3000 approx!) all for the Beckham family one name study.

Tom Beckham