36 replies to this topic

[KFN]

Jerry said:

 

“The stable option is that there is a built-in fact type in RM called the Reference Number. Indeed, this is not just a standard fact type in RM, it is a standard GEDCOM tag that should be supported by most if not all genealogy software. It will be completely stable. However, the management of the Reference Number is completely manual.”

GEDCOM has a tag called REFN (aka REFERENCE NUMBER) that is available on all primary records (individual, family, source) which has the purpose of entering a “A user-defined number or text that the submitter uses to identify this record. For instance, it may be a record number within the submitter's automated or manual system, or it may be a page and position number on a pedigree chart.”

 

It is the tag I use to store a unique identifier for all items/entities within my database.  As a library professional I generate an  accession numbering sequence.  I may have discussed this in other entries.

[Rooty]

Best to scan everything to a digital format and then ensure you have a viable automatic backup plan (external drive/cloud service/offsite thumb drive).

 

Choose your media folder nesting and naming structure very carefully to suit yourself. Hard to change later. Mac naming is very flexible but if you send files to windows people you want to work with their name limitations (characters/length).

 

Test whether scans saved at jpgs or pdfs work better for you and rootsmagic. do both formats, link into rm7 and look at then via media gallery. Can you readily see their content and/or open them in the appropriate program (image viewer/word processing/etc).

[baluo]

Wow, thank you all for your replies.  This was quite helpful.

 

So, essentially, what I could do is use the RM ID as discussed, but add the "Ref No" fact (with an "early date" to sit on top of the person details, or no date to keep it at the end).  And wherever I may send data in the future, this "Ref No" would be transmitted.  Is the "REFN" in GEDCOM mentioned by KFN identical with the "Ref No" fact by RM7? 

 

One way or the other, it allows me to continue using the RM ID's as described, I will only have to add the number as a "Ref No" fact which is what I can do easily when working on person details.  And if ever I pass on database details I can notify the recipient  about the system I use. 

 

Great, many thanks for all your responses!

[RWells1938]

I use a program called NeoFinder free for small users and has a PC version. I found in my occupation years ago if you place a meaning to the file name/or key you eventually got into trouble.

 

I update the metadata of each photo to indicate what/who/dates or what ever I think is important. The file names for each media item has no meaning for me so I just assign a file name like V2020_001. I have them in folders of about 100 images per folder. This was started when I used a PC and it made some difference as to how many items you had in a folder. Now my folders contain all of the media I find for each year. This works for images/documents/text files/etc.

 

The big advantage of this is I do not have any duplicate images, hopefully. 

 

Roger

[JimDavis79]

The stable option is that there is a built-in fact type in RM called the Reference Number. Indeed, this is not just a standard fact type in RM, it is a standard GEDCOM tag that should be supported by most if not all genealogy software. It will be completely stable. However, the management of the Reference Number is completely manual. You will have to add it by hand to each person in your database, and there is no automatic guard against duplicate numbers. You will have to do manage that yourself. There is no prescribed format for a Reference Number. It can contain alpha characters in addition to digits, and indeed it can be any string of characters whatsoever. There is an RM option to display the Reference Numbers on your screen for each person just like there is an RM option to display the RM ID on your screen for each person.

 

Gerhard, this is the option I am pursuing, to wit, entering a Ref ID fact to every person.  As you go along, you might find it helpful to produce a report of all persons without a Ref ID fact, so you know where to concentrate your work.  I think that like you, I use an identifying number in file and folder names to separate (in my case) all the George Davis' that are candidates for my ggpa.  Once I put such a fact in all persons, I'll switch to displaying that instead of the RM ID, and the lack of one will clue me into the need to do so for other persons.

 

Best regards, Jim

[JimDavis79]

 

So, essentially, what I could do is use the RM ID as discussed, but add the "Ref No" fact (with an "early date" to sit on top of the person details, or no date to keep it at the end).  And wherever I may send data in the future, this "Ref No" would be transmitted.  

 

give the Ref ID a Sort Date of one (numeric 1) and it will sort to the top.

[baluo]

Thanks again to you responses and ideas, and, yes, Jim -- the "Ref ID a Sort Date of one (numeric 1)" I also discovered by accident :-)  I have now solved an important aspect for my research system.

[TomH]

One way or the other, it allows me to continue using the RM ID's as described, I will only have to add the number as a "Ref No" fact which is what I can do easily when working on person details.  And if ever I pass on database details I can notify the recipient  about the system I use. 

 

I'm surprised you are still wanting to use the RM record number or RIN (RM ID is a misnomer because there is an internal, unexposed field called RMID which is a long hexadecimal number you would never want to use as a name or label), given it cannot be guaranteed to be stable. RM Tech Support frequently advises customers to drag'n'drop a faulty database to a new one to attempt to fix some problem. Now you have new RINs that bear no relationship to the original RINs you may have embedded in the Ref Number. 

[baluo]

HI TomH,

 

thanks for your comment.  From one earlier comment I understood that _incoming_ database entries receive a new ID different from their previous database --- but the existing database ID's remain.  If this is correct, I think I am fine as I don't have data to include from an existing database (i.e. work with one master db for each of the research projects). 

 

Adding an RIN/RM ID "Fact" manually would also keep the number with the person file even if by chance the automatic "RM ID" changes.  And this is an option I had not been aware of previously. 

 

Adding an ID completely manually to me seems impossible and too much error-prone.  And so far there is no other option ...

[TomH]

GEDCOM REFN = RM "Reference Number" fact type, a text string which is not forced to be unique nor singular for a person.

Record Number or RIN = unique integer value for the PersonID field for the base record of a person in the PersonTable table. The value starts at 1 and autoincrements with each additional person.

Here's a SQLite script I wrote that may be of interest to you. https://sqlitetoolsf...to-all-persons/

[TomH]

Copy RIN to REFN script: https://sqlitetoolsf...py-rin-to-refn/

[baluo]

Thanks, Tom, for the two scripts.  As I am not a programmer, I may have to give it a try sometime later.

 

Experimentally, I have set out to rename hundreds of images that came with this database, and the RM numbering system seems to be a helpful approach in registering them properly.  (They came mostly GivennameSurnameAdditionalInfos). 

 

Here I have an additional question to all, which may not really belong into this thread:

I found that the previous database editor handled the maiden/married names of women inconsistently, i.e. sometimes using birth name, sometimes married name, even if parents were known.  How do you handle this issue?  Always birth name as the person's primary name? 

 

Many thanks, Gerhard

[Jerry Bryan]

Here I have an additional question to all, which may not really belong into this thread:

I found that the previous database editor handled the maiden/married names of women inconsistently, i.e. sometimes using birth names, sometimes married name, even if parents were known.  How do you handle this issue?  Always birth name as the person's primary name? 

 

There is no one right answer to this kind of question about names. Experienced and expert researchers and will disagree. For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert.

I think your "Always birth name as the person's primary name?" question is the most troublesome question. For example, is a married woman's primary name her maiden name (her birth name) or her married name? As I was beginning my research into family history, several experienced and expert researchers counseled me that a woman's name in genealogy is always her birth name. I have basically followed that approach. However, for things like naming image files for death certificates and obituaries, I tend to use the name on the document, and the name on the document usually is her married name. Well, I will usually use her maiden name as well. If Jane Smith married John Doe and her death certificate lists her as Jane Doe, I will name the image file for her death certificate as something like doe_jane_smith_death_certificate.jpg.

Most of the time, I use file management software called Agent Ransack rather than using Windows File Explorer. Agent Ransack is the free version of a product called FileLocator Pro. It is essentially FileLocator Lite. It supports very powerful and easy to use Boolean logic so I can do searches like "doe AND jane AND death AND jpg" without the quotes to find the file quickly, and I can equally well find the same file with a search for "smith AND jane AND death AND jpg" without the quotes.

Beyond that, I find the whole concept of a each person having a single primary name with all the other names being alternate as a pretty bogus data model. A person often has multiple names, and to me there does not seem to be a sound basis for making one of them more equal than the others. I have given this example recently in a different thread, but my mother and her three sisters are all middle name people. And after they were married, they each adopted "middle_name maiden_surname married_surname" as their legal name that they used for checking accounts, driver's licenses, social security cards, and the like. So my mother's older sister who was born Eva Lucille Peters married Audie Wright and became Lucille Peters Wright and signed her name Lucille P. Wright. So she was Lucille P. Wright most of her life, and it was a very legal and dare I say even "primary" name. But it wasn't her birth name.

Genealogy tends to treat names as what somebody in the other thread called a singular event - something that each person has one of such as a Birth event or a Death event, whereas a Census event can occur multiple times. Well, genealogy allows multiple names but it seems to think they are singular in the sense that one of the names must be primary and all the other names must be alternate names or nicknames or some such. But I don't think names are singular events. I think a lot of people, and not just married women, have multiple names where it makes no sense to call one of them primary. Many men are middle name people or are Known By (not Also Known By) a name other than their birth name. Many people's names are changed due to adoption or immigration or just because. I have an adopted cousin who just recently found out his birth name and still his fully legal name is his adopted name. The variety of such situations is limitless. Back to my mother's older sister, I don't like to call either name her primary name. I think she had two co-equal names, Eva Lucille Peters and Lucille Peters Wright. So I don't think in genealogy that she should have one of them be a Primary Name with the other being an Alternate Name. I think both of them should just be a Name.

But I digress. You cannot assign multiple file names to the image of a death certificate, but you can give it a file name rich enough to meet your needs. The file name doesn't have to be the person's name exactly as it appeared on the death certificate nor does it have to be the person's name exactly as their name was given at birth.

Jerry

[TomH]

I wonder if too much weight is being put on the word "Primary" in Jerry's response. We don't have "Secondary" Names - they are "Alternate" Names. The only distinction between name records in the database NameTable is whether the IsPrimary flag is a 1 or a 0. And an Alternate Name can be designated the Birth name or Married name among other types. It is the Primary name that will be used for displays, for name expansion in reports, for WebSearch and, I daresay, for matching on FamilySearch and in a bunch of other places.

 

At last with RM8, the Primary Name won't be the locked box that it has been for users as any of the Alternate Names can be designated as the Primary, as has been the case with some other programs. You will be able to select any name to be Primary to suit your need at the moment. Now, whether there will be any feature such as Set All Birth|Married|Adopted|AKA names as Primary has yet to be seen. Until RM8, swapping a Primary Name with an Alternate is a messy manual edit in RM but easily done with SQLite: 

Names – Edit NameTable with SQLite Expert

[Vyger]

I found that the previous database editor handled the maiden/married names of women inconsistently, i.e. sometimes using birth name, sometimes married name, even if parents were known.  How do you handle this issue?  Always birth name as the person's primary name?

 

I'm late to this thread so not going to deeply, firstly I believe a primary name is the birth name and especially a woman may have records recorded in various married names throughout her life. If I do not know the birth name I leave it blank and record the various Married Names as Alternate Names, I see RM8 will be handling Names differently which is of interest.

 

As regards documents I name them with the name on the document and if they are linked in RM then the rest is self explanatory, I agree with Tom regarding Alternate Names as opposed to Secondary and that may also be an Immigrant or spelling variation.

 

I'm going to post three links, the first was written many years ago when I and two other researhers had to sit and review the massive duplications we were creating through personal preferences of file naming. The second is a very short demo which was posted in quite a hurry to try and help show how Alt Names are beneficial, the last shows how I can find files via file properties and attach them in RM.

Whilst the first link is very old a lot of it is still applicable and RM don't seem to be disclosing much regarding media on the tease videos.

 

http://www.vyger.co....ry-collections/

 

https://youtu.be/j_JaStmYAp0

 

https://youtu.be/25gkgOAgv3k

[baluo]

Thank you all!

[Nettie]

Reference numbers, I remember when this topic was first talked about it.  I did not want to add the RM number to this as it could change when you compact or fix the database.

So I have used it to id a person in a Surname Book example:  My "LeMasters USA" has distinctive numbers attached to each person. So I started using their numbering system in RM for me to find quickly.  Did this with the Chandler Book also   CHAN-####  or LeM-C # - Person# 

There are 12 Chapters and each chapter starts with 1 to 999. 

 

I don't remember if there was a sentence for this fact or not, but the following is how I use it.  I only did this information to my Direct Line ancestors. 

Example: [person] has reference number [Desc] in the "LeMasters, USA" book. 

So 

Changed or added  the sentence in the database so it reads,

Martha LeMaster has reference number LeM C2-317 in the " LeMasters, USA" book .

Martha would and does have two reference numbers as she is in both Books.  And need to add Chandler family to the sentence.