8 replies to this topic

[ricklach]

I recently inherited a large collection of documents and photos.  I am in the process of digitizing all of the items. I have created two sources related to the two family branches of the tree and used the "correspondence, personal, private, in collection template to create two collections.  I have the idea that all media (could be 100 or more documents and images) related to each of those two collections should be contained within the relevant collection source media tab and some documents and images should also appear in the individual's profile attached to the relevant tag.  This would mean that all media related to facts in an individuals profile would use the same source with a distinguishing citation for the particular fact under consideration.

 

By extension, I could also create a "Drouin Collection" -source that would contain all images related to persons in the database for BMDB facts, as opposed to an individual Drouin source/citation for every BMDB event.

 

To put this into perspective, I have about 60K people and 16K images in my database and 30 years of citations (some good, many very bad).  My goal is to deposit all my work with the national archives in versioned sets (about one per year until my demise) to preserve my 35 years of research and writing.  I would like to be able to create a first-class product.

 

Would anyone with experience in this area care to comment on the efficacy of this approach, and/or suggest alternatives.  An Image naming and reference system is also germane to the topic.

[zhangrau]

In my mind, and therefore in my RM database, each unique document is used as evidence of a unique source citation. So I have a single Master Source titled Quebec Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1621-1967 (that's the name of a particular database at Ancestry) which has been used to generate (so far) 41,548 citations. I just checked this by using the [Print] button after highlighting that master source in my Source List. However, that's NOT the number of unique source citations, which is probably closer to 4,000.

 

Here's why:

 

Suppose I find a Baptismal record for Jean-Baptiste Trottier (an exemplar name, not an actual name), a person in my database. I create a source citation typically identified uniquely in the Source Details - Page field as Jean-Baptiste Trottier 1884-_ (B31). This citation identifies the individual, year of the event, and the identifying mark on the scanned document. A citation identification for his death would look like Jean-Baptiste Trottier 1884-1939 (S245).  I link the scanned document (stored on my hard drive) to the Source Citation media tab before memorizing it.

 

This citation then gets memorized and pasted to each parents' General Sources, and the fact sources for an Alternate Name, a Residence location, and an Occupation (whenever those are mentioned in the scan of the Drouin paragraphs. (I use my experience and a French-English dictionary for translations. I have found that older, early 1900's, F-E dictionaries capture the Québecois usage better than recent dictionaries do.) I often also paste that citation to other individuals and facts cited in the Drouin paragraphs (parrain, marraine, temoin, etc.)

 

And, of course, this citation would be pasted to Jean-Baptiste's General Sources and to his Birth, Baptism, and Alternate Name fact sources.

 

So a typical baptismal citation will get pasted 3-5 times to each parent (and perhaps a couple of witnesses) as well as 3 times to the subject individual (Jean-Baptiste Trottier, in this example). That means each unique citation gets used 9-15 times, and the Master Source has been used over 40K times.

 

This is only one way of deciding to use Master Sources, and places me into the "lumper" category for citations. A researcher might just as well (and some do) "split" those citations so that a new Master Source is generated for each unique document. In my case, I'm estimating that would generate about 4K separate Master Sources just for baptisms. So it's fair to estimate that all of my BMD and other Drouin reference documents would create 12K to 20K separate Master Sources (and with ongoing research that number continues to grow).

 

As it is, my Source List has 13,288 entries with 2,196,605 citations. If I were a source "splitter" I might have more like 50K-60K master sources for the same 2M citations. You'll have to cogitate for yourself - "splitter" or "lumper".  I believe both methods have advantages, if they are followed consistently within your database.

[KFN]

In my world every document would be a source and every use of the document would be a citation of a bit of information from that document. I define document here to be a published book, a published article, a single interview of a person, a photograph/painting/poem, a census year for a country when there is a country wide census, or a yearly census for a country subset if not a based on a country wide census, a family bible, church book, county registry, etc.

I see collections of documents in a library be it a personal library, public library, corporate owned collection, are considered a repository in GEDCOM terms. Ancestry.com is NOT a source, the US census and government would be the source, they are the original data generator, A.com is a repository of those sources.

[Nettie]

I agree with KFN,  any website containing specific information is a repository as is a library, a church, a court house, etc....

You need to be able to find the source again.  This is very important.

 

A source should contain [WWWWW] [Who, What, Where, Why, When]

1. a repository,
2. Full name of the actual source/document
3. author,
4. call letters if so needed and
5. comments or analysis of the source.
6. Some people include the date on which you found it also. 

[zhangrau]

It sounds a bit like KFN thinks I use Ancestry.com as a Source. Not so. I completely agree with him and Nettie that Ancestry.com is a Repository. Here's a screencap of my source referenced above:

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[KFN]

Because I'm not familiar with the "Drouin Collection" specifically, my library training see this as a subset of the larger entity not a single source, (unless the collection is a single volume or set of volumes, like a collection of townsfolk names in a collected set). Generally in library well call a "collection" as a larger number of un-associated documents from a collector who gave them to the library or museum as a unit and the library decided or was asked to keep them together.

So when I see the term "collection" this does not become a source but a part of the repository information. But this is me, talking detail, I'm just glad that you are not thinking the source is A.com, which I never ment to imply that you did.

[hmac]

How can I print only books that are contained in my Sources list? Basically want a bibliography of books. Thanks.

[kbens0n]

How can I print only books that are contained in my Sources list? Basically want a bibliography of books. Thanks.

http://forums.rootsm...hl=bibliography

I guess you'd have to edit the output down to just books.

[Vyger]

 

I agree with KFN,  any website containing specific information is a repository as is a library, a church, a court house, etc....

You need to be able to find the source again.  This is very important.

 

A source should contain [WWWWW] [Who, What, Where, Why, When]

1. a repository,
2. Full name of the actual source/document
3. author,
4. call letters if so needed and
5. comments or analysis of the source.
6. Some people include the date on which you found it also. 

 

 

I'm just reading through this thread and not pressing an opinion, I just wanted to say I particularly like Netties post and also that of KFN.