13 replies to this topic

[Beth Savage]

Hi,

 

I'm new to RootsMagic and I'm still trying to figure out how some aspects work. In my current situation, I have a yearbook photo that I have entered as Yearbook under Source. I connected it to an Education fact since it supports the person being at that school in that year. But now I'm confused.

 

I have 2 yearbooks from different years, so that's two Education facts with years they are connected to.

 

I also have an Education "High School" fact that covers all four years. No Source for that since the Yearbooks only cover 2 years.

 

Finally, I have a Residence fact from that year which I think I could also use the Yearbook to prove.

 

My questions are:

 

1. How should I organize this? Put the Yearbooks under the "High School" Education instead of having three facts? That seems clearer, but I'm afraid that I'll forget I have the pics 6 months down the road. Or should each fact have its own line? For example, I have a lot of little pieces of information from Census that I want to include.

 

2. Is there a way to link two facts for a person to one Source? I saw where I can link one Source to two different people, but not the former. I was thinking about linking both Residence (during high school) and Education High School to the Yearbooks, but I couldn't find a way to do it. I guess I could copy it, but that's not very effective.

 

I read the manual and looked around the forum and other sites, but couldn't find anything. Thanks for any suggestions

 

Beth

[Jerry Bryan]

You can add a citation for one fact, memorize the citation, and paste the same citation to a second fact. Well, the second citation is really a copy of the first citation, not the "same" citation.

 

Jerry

[Beth Savage]

I see what you're saying. It seems a little weird though that I could refer to the same Source from multiple people but have to make a copy of the Source if I want to refer to it more than once from the same person.

 

Thanks for the suggestion!

[Paul Harris]

Hi, Beth,

 

It really isn't weird at all. When you describe creating a Source Citation for multiple people at the same time, you are still referencing only ONE Event to which the multiple people are attached (1 or 2 principles plus witnesses). In order  to cite multiple events you need to create a new citation to the source, or make a copy and paste it to the additional event. The memorize and paste is a convenience tool to use when citing multiple events with the same source.

 

Paul

[Beth Savage]

Hmm, I see what you mean. Maybe I need to break things down more,

 

Thanks!

[baluo]

Hi, Beth,

 

It really isn't weird at all. When you describe creating a Source Citation for multiple people at the same time, you are still referencing only ONE Event to which the multiple people are attached (1 or 2 principles plus witnesses). In order  to cite multiple events you need to create a new citation to the source, or make a copy and paste it to the additional event. The memorize and paste is a convenience tool to use when citing multiple events with the same source.

 

Paul

 

Hi Paul,

I am currently working with many historical letters.  These documents were written at a certain date and place by its author and for a recipient.  Each document often contains references to a range of different people, places or events, sometimes even over a sequence of letters.

 

So far I have used the "memorize & paste" function, although it feels strange, to be honest:  If I select the respective source for a new fact, RM7 wants to create a new (sub-)source ...  That's not logical!

Gerhard

[Jerry Bryan]

I have been reluctant to bring the following into this discussion, but perhaps it is time to do so.

RM uses a data model for creating footnote sentence where a part of your evidence data goes into a Master Source and a part of your evidence data goes into a Source Detail.RM's source templates then put all this evidence data from the Master Source and the Source Detail back together into a single footnote sentence for printing in reports. The terms Master Source and Source Detail are unconventional but the concept is completely conventional and might even be considered a standard in genealogy. More conventionally, much genealogy software and many genealogists refer to what RM calls a Master Source as a Source and refer to what RM calls a Source Detail as a Citation.

The conventional data model surely comes from the way citations for books have traditionally been handled. The book as a whole is the Source. The book as whole is referenced in terms of its author, its title, and its publishing data such as the name of the publishing house, the city where it was published, and the year where it was published. Then a reference to a  particular page such as page 27 or p.27 or pages 43-45 or pp.43-45 then becomes the Citation. Genealogical data then has the problem of using this same data model for data that is not in published books such as census records, birth records, death records, obituaries, deeds, wills, tombstone inscriptions, and the like. For these kinds of records, just what is the Source and what is the Citation?

 

I think a better data model is in terms of evidence and of citations for that evidence. I think the evidence - the real Source, if you will - has to be a media file. This could be an image of a census page, an image of a birth record, an image of a death record, and even an image from a page in a book. Then the footnote sentence as a whole is the Citation. The Citation simply tells you where the Source was found.

It may or may not seem jarring that each census page or each birth record is its own separate Source using this model. But it certainly should seem a bit jarring that each page of a book is its own separate Source using this model. But jarring or not, this model is the way I finally wrapped my feeble brain around the whole concept of "sources and citations" and figured out how to make it work for me.

My original motivation for adopting this somewhat unconventional model was not any particular "Aha!" moment about what Sources and Citations should be. Rather, it was a rather pragmatic and engineering solution on my part to the very awkward way that RM handles Memorize and Paste of Citations. Namely, when you Paste a Citation in RM, it makes a whole separate copy of the Citation even though it's really the same Citation. Hence, to make any corrections whatsoever you have to chase down each copy of the Citation and make the correction in each copy. My practical and engineering solution to this problem was to place all my evidence data into RM's Master Source and to have gazillions of RM's Master Sources. That way, a Memorize and Paste operation of a Citation in RM essentially just creates a reference to a single shared Source as the Citation rather than creating a whole separate and independent copy of the Citation. And any correction I make to the shared Source as the Citation is immediately made in all the Citations.

Even though this was a practical and engineering solution to a weakness in RM's design, over several years I came to the very gradual "Aha!" conclusion that the weakness was not so much in RM's design as it was in the conventional data model itself. The conventional data model leads very directly to the weakness in RM's design and it does not tell you how to link you media files - your real Evidence - to the Citations themselves.

 

RM8 apparently will support some sort of Shared Citation facility. I will have to evaluate it to see if I want to use it or if I want to keep using my current model. I should mention that my current model, although unconventional, has the great advantage that it makes my evidence data very transportable between different genealogy software programs. I should also say that my current model has the great disadvantage that it makes it essentially impossible to create a conventional Bibliography where you simply list your sources without citing them.

 

Hopefully, it would be obvious that most of my Master Sources do end up being Memorized and Pasted many times. A birth certificate is evidence for parents in addition to being evidence for birth. A death certificate is often evidence for birth, parents and their birth places, and spouse in addition to being evidence for death. An obituary is often evidence for many, many things and I often Memorize and Paste a Master Source for an obituary as many as 15 or 20 times. Etc.

Part of RM's motivation for its use of the Master Source and Source Detail model is to enable the Master Source data to be reused with different Source Details. My suggested model does not support such reuse. I get the same effect by initiating a new Master Source by copying an existing Master Source that already has most of the data I want. I think a better way if RM would support it would be to have a multiple level (not just two level) hierarchical structure for managing Master Sources like a folder and sub-folder structure where the parts of Footnote Sentences that would be reused (like "U.S. Federal Census") would be at the higher levels of the structure and things like page numbers would be at the lowest level of the structure. The final Footnote Sentence would simply be the concatenation of all these levels. That's just the way I personally think and tend to organize things. There are about as many styles of thinking and of organizing things as there are people, so maybe having genealogy software organize evidence in this way wouldn't make sense. I don't know for sure.

 

Jerry

[KFN]

In the case of obituaries found in newspapers, person data info found in a census, some death record information, the Source<->SourceCitation concept can still work when you make the ”Source” the newspaper by issue, the census by census year/location, death record by the book the compile the records by year/place.

 

However I do agree that many singular entries don’t lend themselves to the Source<->SourceCitation construct.  For head stones I assume that a headstone could contain more than one person, such as a columbarium or family plot and therefore place all general location information for the stone (row/plot) info, map image location of stone, in the source.  Then only put an image of the person data on the stone and if appropriate the location of that data when multiple people are displayed in the SourceCitation.  This kind of follows the book<->page construct with a library (person on stone<->stone within cemetery).

[baluo]

Many thanks, Jerry & KFN, for your extensive replies.

 

As a still-newbie with RM7, I am not sure, however, how to apply these answers to my question. 

 

I gather from this discussion that the only option I have right now is to "memorize & paste" either the the full source or the citation entry.  Which means, while I can easily find a source via the "Source Lists", unfortunately I can't "memorize & paste" it from there.  So I would either have to create a new source with the same details (and most likely a different ID in the database) or search for a fact that already may include this source.  Is that correct?

 

Imho, a more logical access mode would be helpful.

[TomH]

I'm not sure that I understand the problem. "Memorise and Paste" does not make a new copy of the Master Source from the SourceTable; rather it copies the values from the Source Details (Citation Details - green zone of the Citation Editor) and pastes them into a new record in the CitationTable. The Source List lists the records in the SourceTable, i.e., the names you assigned to the Master Sources; optionally, you can print the Source List to show every usage (every person/couple/event) or citation of each Master Source.

 

As Jerry has described, the terminology and its usage is confusing. It may help to draw an analogy with RM's management of Media. The Media Gallery has its analog with the Source List, the list of Master Sources. Each Media item (each Master Source) can be "tagged" (cited) to or against multiple people, events, Master Sources, Citations... When you "Memorise and paste" a citation, the pasting action is effectively "tagging" a Master Source to/against another record in a person, name, family (couple), event table. 

 

From the Source List, you can use MultiCite on an existing or new Master Source to "tag" it to multiple people (checkmark shows at the Person level in the Edit Person screen). The citation fields will be empty so this works most efficiently with Jerry's "extremely split" concept. If you want the source to be tagged at other than the Person 'fact', you will have to open each Person's Edit Person screen, open the Citation Manager on the Person 'citation tag, edit the details as needed and save, click on Memorise, OK and then paste the citation tag to the facts/events of that person and any other persons as needed, editing each citation tag as you go if necessary.

 

Another place to start is from the Edit Person screen. When you add a source to a fact, you choose between adding a new source or citing an existing one. MultiCite is not applicable here but Memorise is because you have access to the full Master Source and Citation Details (tag values) in this screen. Once Memorised, you can move throughout the database, selecting different people to open the Edit Person screen and Pasting (tagging) to different facts.

 

Yes, it is cumbersome which is why I so much prefer building an evidence-driven tree on Ancestry instead. It's a very efficient procedure within its own limitations. Having concluded that a piece of evidence, Census is the best example, applies to a person in the tree, accepting it offers up the additional events, facts, persons the evidence is thought to support by their AI system. A few ticks and clicks and the tree has grown, knowledge about the original person of interest has mushroomed and it is all 'sourced'.  

[Jerry Bryan]

I failed to clarify my full process. I initiate a new Master Source by going into the list of Master Sources and copying an existing one. Having copied it, I edit it to become the new Master Source. Then from the Edit Person screen, I do a Cite Existing Source rather than doing an Add New Source, and I choose the new Master Source that I just made. Having cited the new source just once in this manner, I then Memorize and Paste it all the other places it needs to go. I suppose instead I could go through the Cite Existing Source process for the same source several times, but having done so once I find it easier to follow the Memorize and Paste route thereafter.

 

It is the case that if you go the Cite Existing Source route and if you are not putting all your evidence data into the Master Source, then you are only citing the Master Source data and you are not citing any data that might be in any Source Details associated with that particular Master Source. If RM8 does include a Shared Citation feature as I expect, then my expectation is that there will be something like Cite Existing Citation. But I'm not 100% sure if such a feature will be in RM8, and even if it is then I certainly do not know any of the particular details of how it will work.

Back to creating a new Master Source by copying and then editing an existing one, there are two ways into the RM user interface to do so. The first way is to go into Lists>Source List where you do the copying and editing. Then you leave Lists>Source and go into the Edit Person screen to cite the Master Source you just made. The second way is a bit of a short cut but you have to be very careful to use it. That is from the Edit Person screen, you Cite Existing Source even though the Master Source you wish to cite doesn't exist yet. But Cite Existing Source takes you into the Source List. From the Source List, you can do the Copying of a Master Source and the Editing of the new Master Source you just made. The first way is the way I did it initially. The second way is the way I do it now. But it took me a while with the second way not to make mistakes such as choosing the original Master Source rather than the copy to Edit (a total disaster) or to Copy (not a disaster, but a small mess to clean up). I have finally taught myself not to make these dumb mistakes.

 

Jerry

[baluo]

Thank you, Tom & Jerry for your extensive explanations.  I will give it a try in the process of the work I am involved with right now.

[Nettie]

Give you my way of doing the year books,  each year book has different pages number and many pages to one person.  So if I were doing a year book, I would  use the book template for all pages in one book.  You can copy the master source to each person in that book, but you will have different page numbers & probaby names for each time you use the source.   So one major source for year 1957, and page numbers to the person you are listing this for.  Another major source for year 1956, again many pages numbers for people in the year book.  MY experience with school year books, probably current days last 10 year they each could be by a different publisher and place.  But if it is 1950'sor 60's,  we used the same publisher for each year. [yes I was a year book editor] But you still have a single master source for each year. Many of us follow the guidelines of Eizabeth Shown Mills book , Evidnce Explained" and the RM templates are fashioned after her book suggestions.  She does have a web site and used to be on this forum also.  Do not know if she still is. 

 

Does take a lot of thought processes to do sources so you can find them again, & work. Jeff, Tom and I and a couple others were around when the templaes were put in place on RM. Good Luck....

Nettie

[baluo]

Many thanks, Nettie, and also for the hint re Elizabeth Mill.  G