* Ideas for Recording Research (and To-Dos)

[arthurk]

I'm hoping for some ideas, please, on recording research that I've done, but probably also To-Dos.

What I'm mostly wanting to record is references to my paper notes (eg "Notes page 23, 56" etc); at present I keep a list of To-Dos outside FH, but I can see the value of having them in the program, so it would make sense to find a solution that makes this possible. My current practice is based on what I was doing in other programs, and now I'm trying to introduce some consistency, within the FH environment.

1. Some of my "Notes page" data is in a custom Research Fact, in the Value field, but I'd like to move this to the Notes field. Does this have to be done manually one at a time, or is there a quick way to do it? (For example, could the Change Any Fact Tag plug-in map Value in one fact to Notes in another?)

2. What are the pros and cons of using:
(a) a single Research Fact with meta-fields for (i) Research Done (my "Notes Page") and (ii) To-Dos, and possibly also (iii) Comments, for extra notes on aspects of the research
(b) separate Facts for (i), (ii) and (iii)

There aren't a vast number of individuals involved here - about 120 with my custom Research fact, so manually copying and pasting isn't out of the question. However, I also have about 150 with "Notes Page..." in a general note (a hangover from another program) that I'd like to move to a fact, plus a backlog of cross-referencing to my paper notes to catch up with, so I'd like to get a system in place before dealing with these.

I've had a look at how_to:create_work_in_progress_or_research_to_do_lists|Create Work In Progress or Research To Do Lists. However, I'm not quite sure how the fhugdownloads:contents:fact_set_to_do_lists|Fact Set ~ To Do Lists would integrate with what I already have in place. (Plus, I'd like my extra tab to be called Research rather than To-Do, since I'm focussing more on what I've already done than what is still to do.)

Thanks for any thoughts on this.

[tatewise]

Taking your last points first, you can call the Fact and the Tab whatever you like, but presumably would want them the same.
You can Rename a tab, but you would be advised to create the Fact with the desired name.
I don't quite understand the Research is already done perspective, because if it is already done then it is recorded in Source Citations against Facts, etc.

The Knowledge Base approach is similar to your 2. (a) single Fact with meta-fields in Notes.
There are various methods you could try including separate Facts.
The important aspect is to check out the Diagrams and Reports you want to produce and the design of Property Box tabs.
It would make sense to transfer your paper notes into FH somewhere, even if only in the Note Records that can be linked to almost anything.

There are no existing tools to transform what you have into what you might want.
It would require a new Plugin, and that needs consistency, so it sounds like a manual conversion job.

[arthurk]

Thank you for this - I'll add a few comments.

Taking your last points first, you can call the Fact and the Tab whatever you like, but presumably would want them the same.
You can Rename a tab, but you would be advised to create the Fact with the desired name.

Obviously if I created 2 or 3 Facts, the tab could only match one of them - hence wondering about a general "Research" tab, and splitting the content into 2 or 3 more specific Facts.

I don't quite understand the Research is already done perspective, because if it is already done then it is recorded in Source Citations against Facts, etc.

Yes, it is recorded as such, but rightly or wrongly, when doing that I've never referred explicitly in the Facts or Sources etc to whereabouts in my paper notes the information was recorded. My "Notes Page..." data is intended to be a way of cross-referencing from the program back to the paper notes, to make it easier to find them again if I need to. And as it's just for my own use, I felt it was easier to put it in a Fact that was never shared than to put it somewhere else in privacy brackets - and also to have it all in one place. In any case, some research that's recorded in my paper notes might not always translate easily to Sources or Facts, particularly if it's a nil finding.

The Knowledge Base approach is similar to your 2. (a) single Fact with meta-fields in Notes.

That's where I got the idea.

There are various methods you could try including separate Facts.

I know - which is why before committing to any of them I was wondering if any of them had pros or cons that I should be aware of. Or is it just:

The important aspect is to check out the Diagrams and Reports you want to produce and the design of Property Box tabs.
It would make sense to transfer your paper notes into FH somewhere, even if only in the Note Records that can be linked to almost anything.

There are no existing tools to transform what you have into what you might want.
It would require a new Plugin, and that needs consistency, so it sounds like a manual conversion job.

OK, I suspected it might be that, but it's manageable.

Thanks for the thoughts.

[tatewise]

Yes, if you go down the multiple fact route, then the tab would need a generic name.

I still don't understand how your Sources identify their derivation from your paper notes.
How does a Notes Page act as a cross-reference if the Sources are not involved?
Even a nil finding can be a Source with appropriate comments to identify what has been eliminated/excluded.
It also begs the question: Why have paper notes at all? Surely it would be better if all in FH and linked & indexed there?

However, we each have different methodologies.
The important concept is to be consistent and ensure the tools (Diagrams, Reports, Queries, Plugins, etc) give you want you want from your database structure.
The Knowledge Base focusses on future Research/To Do lists, and if you need historical data too, then that may well need multiple facts.

[E Wilcock]

Like you I dont know what to do about my own research. -In TMG I had a To do list, In fh Sample Project the named list seems to be called Work in Progress. That seems to vague to me.

However the search functionin fh means that I could simply add the words To Do to any Tag and it would show up at once.

As for old paper research - I inherited Research files on paper which record my father's genealogical research from the 1920s onwards.
The first thing I did was to name each file and then (in pencil) to number the pages in each file.

As Mike suggests, I then used the volume and page numbers as sources or citations (where in source). I have never numbered my own paper research files, but do sometimes note research which may be found there.

The problem of recording and cross referencing hand written letters and notes was solved for me when I photographed my father's files on his own family, page by page (with page numbers) and uploaded the images to a private webspace from which other family members had permission to down load them. I also uploaded a word document, explaining the contents of his files - and listing any certificates they contained, but not indexing them.
My first priority has always been to list and scan old family photographs, and to have page images and transcriptions of diaries, memoirs etc. But the photographing of research files - which is what one would do if they were in the National Archive - has been so useful to me that I will probably do the same with his files on my mother's family.

One of the things that my parents did in their retirement was to go on genealogical research trips to places our family had once lived. My husband and I have done the same and I may scan some of the photos and slides from those trips. Has anyone any idea on how to record this genealogical tourism in fh?

[tatewise]

Firstly, you can create as many Named Lists as you like, and rename existing lists via right-click List Properties.
Also the auto-created lists are configured in Tools > Preferences > Named Lists for both names and columns.

Alternatively, you can create custom Research/To Do facts supported by Tabs, Reports, Queries, etc.
See how_to:create_work_in_progress_or_research_to_do_lists|> Create Work In Progress or Research To Do Lists and fhugdownloads:contents:fact_set_to_do_lists|> Fact Set ~ To Do Lists.

It is not clear in your last point whether you want to record the genealogical research trips, or just the photos and slides.

Each trip could be recorded in a Source record with extensive Notes or linked Note records describing the itinerary.
All the photos and slides can be attached via the Media tab of each Source record.

The photos and slides are presumably mostly of places, so their Media records can be linked to Place records.
The Place records will automatically be linked to facts with those Place names.
Any particular evidence discovered can be captured in new/existing facts with appropriate Source & Media links as usual.

[E Wilcock]

Each trip could be recorded in a Source record with extensive Notes or linked Note records describing the itinerary.
All the photos and slides can be attached via the Media tab of each Source record.

Thanks Mike - I hadnt thought of a trip as a source - excellent idea. I will do that.

Apart from the odd personal portrait that was already linked in TMG, I havent started linking any media yet. I have in mind Certificates, and Census images, which (since I have lumped many sources) I intended to link to a Event Tag rather than to a source.

I have hesitated because the instruction book seems to suggest that fh would then treat these source documents images the same as photos of the person, and there would be no way of outputting these images in a report, or CD unless one included them in every tree diagram too?

However I now see that I have thoroughly misunderstood fh. Tho the image icon in the source pane seems to belong to the source rather than the citation, if one clicks it, there is a choice and one can after all in fh add an image for a citation -

Do you have views on this Mike? Since I seem to have got the wrong idea that one could not do this, is it not recommended?

The topic Citations is not in the index to the Getting the Most Book. I think I may have done something wrong in the few sources I have tried to link to an image - my own fault as I disregarded your advice to bring them all into the fh folders.

Attaching images to places is also a great idea, as I have old maps and even sketchmaps made by my father. And photos of houses now demoiished.

[arthurk]

I still don't understand how your Sources identify their derivation from your paper notes.
How does a Notes Page act as a cross-reference if the Sources are not involved?
Even a nil finding can be a Source with appropriate comments to identify what has been eliminated/excluded.
It also begs the question: Why have paper notes at all? Surely it would be better if all in FH and linked & indexed there?

Possibly your way of thinking is inextricably tied to the use of computers. I started researching when often the only way to get information was to travel to a distant archive where you would make notes on paper of what had been found. Later, at home, the content of these notes was entered into a family history program. The Sources of the information were the documents etc that had been consulted.

I would hesitate to describe my own notes as sources, because that tends to imply some kind of equivalence between historical documents and the research process which seeks to uncover and understand them. Even if I did consider my research and notes to be sources, they could never be more than secondary, or sometimes even tertiary: the very nature of the process means that the documents I had made notes on would always be a better source, and one which was accessible to other people too.

Because information was so much harder to get hold of in those days (and even now there are vast quantities that aren't online), particularly when visiting archives that I couldn't get to very often, I would tend to note down more than was strictly necessary. For example, if searching for register entries for one particular family, I would typically also make a note of others with the same surname, just in case they might turn out to be connected later on. It's therefore important to be able to find and refer to these notes when doing further research, but in the meantime those people are not part of my FH project.

I haven't given up the habit of making paper notes, even with information found online (though in such cases the notes may not be as full), and I still do data entry later rather than on the spot.

So, how do I translate this to the FH environment?

Facts are recorded, with appropriate Sources and Citations. Sources don't generally refer explicitly to my paper notes; instead, the separate "Notes Page" data tells me where to find the information in my paper notes in case I need to refer to it again.

I could in theory shift the Notes Page data to a new Source ("My Notes"), but I prefer the greater visibility of Facts and the option, in FH, of including one or more Research Facts in a Research tab - to say nothing of my reluctance to consider my own notes as sources in their own right.

I'm not totally up to speed with privacy options in FH: all I know about is using [[ ]] brackets in Notes, but are there any other ways of recording things that are for my eyes only, such as private facts or sources?

I agree that nil findings need to be recorded, but how and where? If I've searched high and low for a will for someone and not found one, it's misleading to create a Will or Probate fact, let alone put a Source on it, so I record the searches elsewhere - currently in a general note on the person, but probably in future in some kind of Research fact. For me, Facts and their associated Sources are things that have been established, not things that have drawn a blank. Anything else goes in Notes of one sort or another, or else in a fact that clearly relates to my Research rather than the life of the person concerned.

This methodology works for me, and what I'm really trying to do is find the best way to integrate it into FH.

[tatewise]

OK, that makes thing clearer, and I now better understand your philosophy.
We all work differently, and it is comforting that FH lets us do so.

My general concern is that you seem to have several ways to record research related details :-

• The whole record Note for an Individual
• Specific research custom Facts
• Other Notes of one sort or another

Your concern seems to be about how to make them private for your eyes only.

I am guessing, but presumably privacy only becomes important when you export your data elsewhere in some form?
Are you talking about exported Diagrams, or Reports, or Gedcom, or Webpages?

The more types of data structure you use for such details, the more tactics you need to employ to make them private.
The easiest way to make particular Note text private is to enclose the text in [[brackets]].
Otherwise, you are faced with excluding all Note text just to exclude the sensitive text.
Custom Facts are easier to exclude, because they have a distinctive unique name.
They can easily be excluded from Diagrams and Reports and from exported Gedcom using standard options.

Many of the privacy options in FH are aimed more towards use of the Private and Living flags, and hiding the details of living people, than towards hiding research notes.

You need to experiment with those techniques, and your methodology, until you find a working strategy.
Then you must convert what you have, and stick to the strategy consistently henceforth.
If you can, try and minimise the data structures in which you hold details you want to hide.

BTW: You can include whole record Notes along with research Facts in a Research tab, but it will include all such Notes and not just your research details.

[arthurk]

Thank you, Mike, this helps a lot. To answer/comment on a few points:

My general concern is that you seem to have several ways to record research related details :-

• The whole record Note for an Individual
• Specific research custom Facts
• Other Notes of one sort or another

That's one of my concerns too - to bring them all together as much as possible. Certainly the first two should be combined, and some of the third, although in some cases it may be appropriate to add a research-related comment to a fact to clarify why, say, one possible register entry has been preferred to another.

Your concern seems to be about how to make them private for your eyes only.

I am guessing, but presumably privacy only becomes important when you export your data elsewhere in some form?
Are you talking about exported Diagrams, or Reports, or Gedcom, or Webpages?

Yes, privacy is one concern, and it would apply mainly to Reports and Gedcoms.

...Custom Facts are easier to exclude, because they have a distinctive unique name.
They can easily be excluded from Diagrams and Reports and from exported Gedcom using standard options.

Having now briefly looked at this, I am pretty confident that Custom Facts will be the way to go for items that I may wish to exclude from published/shared output - I'll have to experiment to see whether I prefer a single Fact with meta-fields for Notes Page, Comments and To-Dos, or separate Facts for each.

Then you must convert what you have, and stick to the strategy consistently henceforth.
If you can, try and minimise the data structures in which you hold details you want to hide.

Certainly - I always aim to keep things structured as simply as possible, and the fact that my Notes Pages are currently split between facts and notes is because I had been converting them on an ad hoc basis rather than going through systematically, then switched to FH part way through the process.

BTW: You can include whole record Notes along with research Facts in a Research tab, but it will include all such Notes and not just your research details.

I may well experiment with that - if nothing else, it would be a way of viewing the whole record Notes alongside any Research Facts to help me decide what to put where.

Thanks again.

[tatewise]

Just in case you did not know :-

• All Reports that can include Facts have in Report Options on the first tab an Exclude List option.
• For Gedcom it is usually best to use the Export > GEDCOM File command first and later the Split Tree Help that has a Delete all facts listed below option, as described in how_to:exporting_gedcom_with_multimedia#export_to_website_without_sensitive_data|> Export to Website Without Sensitive Data.

[arthurk]

Thanks for all the help and ideas on this. My provisional solution is to have two custom attributes - Research and To Do. As I may have mentioned before, my To Do data is currently outside of FH, so it may be a while before I configure that exactly how I want it. My current concern is how to configure the Research fact, and specifically its display on the Facts tab of the Property Box. (I have also created my own Research tab, but have no issues with that.)

To get me started I've set up the Research fact with 4 meta-fields - Notes Page: BMD: Census: and Other:. These can be deleted if not needed, or others might be added in due course. However, I am finding that in the display on the Facts tab, these meta-fields run together with no spaces between, even though they are separated by a carriage return. See this screen shot:

akfactstab1003.jpg (22.52 KiB) Viewed 10469 times

(For the Facts tab listing the Research fact is using as an override {label}: {note}, and I've left the empty meta-fields in place in this example to help to demonstrate what the issue is.)

I've found two ways of dealing with this, one easy and one more complicated. The easy way is to add a few spaces at the beginning or end of each meta-field.

For the complicated one I devised an expression using the GetLabelledText function for each meta-field, enclosed in <> brackets to suppress it if the item wasn't present and with a couple of spaces at the end of each part of the expression, but besides creating a very long override phrase, this presents two problems: (a) if new meta-fields are used, the phrase needs to be amended; (b) if the Note contains something which isn't part of a meta-field, I can't see how to include it.

To keep things simple, I shall almost certainly just put spaces at the beginning or end of each meta-field, but I just wanted to check whether I had missed something and if there was some other way to separate the items in the Facts tab listing.

[tatewise]

Try =GetParagraph() instead, with enough to cover all eventualities.

However, since it always comes first when you open the Facts tab, its Notes and meta-fields will be shown below.

[arthurk]

Thank you - I think I'm almost there. Since the space available in the Facts listing is always going to be limited, I've decided to limit it to 3 paragraphs, so I've come up with the following:
{label}: {=GetParagraph(%FACT.NOTE2%,1)}< / {=GetParagraph(%FACT.NOTE2%,2)}>< / {=GetParagraph(%FACT.NOTE2%,3)}>

This works, although it seems that any number of consecutive spaces are rendered as a single one, so to make it clearer, I've used the conditional <> brackets with the string " / " (that's space slash space) to make a separation.

However, there's one further refinement that I'm wondering about. In the rather unlikely case that there are 3 short paragraphs followed by a 4th one, could it be made to show " / More..." where a 4th one exists, just in case there's room for that in the listing?

I'd thought it was possible to nest this kind of expression so came up with
{=ExistsText(=GetParagraph(%FACT.NOTE2%,4), " / More...")}
but it didn't work. Am I asking the impossible here, or have I made a mistake?

[tatewise]

Nested functions drop their = prefix.

[arthurk]

Thanks for pointing that out, Mike - but I'm still struggling to find an expression that will display a text string if the fact Notes contain a particular paragraph . I've been testing a few, as follows:

{=GetParagraph(%FACT.NOTE2%,1)} works fine and returns the first paragraph of the Notes field.
{=ExistsText(%FACT.NOTE2%, "resnote")} also works - if there is a Notes field, it shows resnote.

Trying to put the two together I've come up with:
{=ExistsText(GetParagraph(%FACT.NOTE2%,1), "resnote")} but it returns nothing.

I wondered if I needed an extra pair of () brackets round the GetParagraph function:
{=ExistsText((GetParagraph(%FACT.NOTE2%,1)), "resnote")} but that also returns nothing.

While experimenting, some of the permutations I came up with must have been invalid, as the facts tab display showed the (incorrect) expression. This didn't happen with the two versions I've given here, which suggests to me that the syntax is valid, but that for some reason it's an invalid instruction.

Can anyone shed any light on this, please?

[tatewise]

I don't have access to a PC just now.
Perhaps GetParagraph always returns a text string albeit empty.
Could try TextIf() in place of ExistsText() with condition GetParagraph(...) = "".

[arthurk]

Thank you - that gives an interesting result:
{=TextIf(GetParagraph(%FACT.NOTE2%,1), "resnote", "xx")} always seems to return xx. Changing the paragraph number doesn't make any difference, including when the number here is greater than the number of paragraphs.

Unless anyone else wants to comment, I can wait for Mike to get back to a PC to look at it. But I'm beginning to wonder if this is worth all the time and energy being thrown at it, especially if it's only for me. I already have at least 4 options which produce a result fairly close to what I'm looking for:

(a) {=GetParagraph(%FACT.NOTE2%,1)} to show the first part of the Note only
(b) {=GetParagraph(%FACT.NOTE2%,1)}< / {=GetParagraph(%FACT.NOTE2%,2)}> to show a second paragraph too, if present, with a slash to separate them
(c) {note} to show the whole Note, with a few spaces inserted manually if required to stop it all running together
(d) one or more =GetLabelledText expressions

Of those, (b) probably comes closest to what I had hoped for, and I'm sure I'll be able to live with it. So unless you, Mike, or anyone else particularly wants to go further with this, I'm happy to leave it there.

Many thanks for all the input.

[tatewise]

Use {=TextIf(GetParagraph(%FACT.NOTE2%,4) = "", ," / More...")} as I suggested.

[arthurk]

Use {=TextIf(GetParagraph(%FACT.NOTE2%,4) = "", ," / More...")} as I suggested.

Thank you, that works exactly as I had hoped, and I'm sorry to have messed you around and not got there sooner. Where you put "" I misunderstood that to mean I needed to put something between the "", rather than copy them exactly, and it looks like I missed out the = as well, so didn't properly define the condition.

I've also now compared your expression with the example in the Help file for TextIf, and can see what you've done. (I know you don't need me to write this, but it might help others trying to follow the discussion.)
1st parameter: If paragraph is empty
2nd parameter: output is nothing
3rd parameter: otherwise output " / More..."
Doing it that way hadn't occurred to me, so thank you for that.

I have actually slightly tweaked what goes in the facts tab, but it's still very much based on your suggestions. I decided it would be most unusual for the paragaphs to be so short that more than one or two would be visible, so I've cut it down to just one plus optional "More", which I've now rendered as (More) rather than More... So my resulting override template is:
{label}: {=GetParagraph(%FACT.NOTE2%,1)}{=TextIf(GetParagraph(%FACT.NOTE2%,2) = "", ," / (More)")}

Screenshot:

akfactstab1203.jpg (17.31 KiB) Viewed 10335 times

Arthur