9 replies to this topic

[BarryEvans]

Forgive me if this has been covered before and because I am only starting to get to grips with the new plethora of source templates available in RM4, but as always, I'd like to start off on the right foot...

I don't (yet) have a copy of Elizabeth Shown Mills' 'Evidence Explained'. It now seems to be an almost essential purchase if you are to use RM4 source templates correctly? In the meantime I'd like to enter a few new key sources that I have just obtained (you know, the once a year certificates that come through and finally unlock a long genealogical mystery ). So can anyone please recommend the correct templates for:

England & Wales (certified copy of an entry of) B/M/D certificates obtained from the GRO London? (You know, the ones that cost you 7 quid!). There seem to be lots of choices for marriages and deaths especially in RM4+EE.

I'm sure there are a few others which will become apparent in the near future, but these will really help me now.

Like many others it seems, I'll wait until the dust settles (and conversion tools are written?) before I tackle long standing 'core' sources such E&W census.

Thanks,

Barry

[bienia]

Try "Civil Registrations, England".

When you go to select a source, but don't see something at first glance, try typing different keywords into the Search for Source type field, such as England, Certificates, registration, etc.

If you use the source type you find regularly, click the gold star to add it to Favorites.

[Glenn]

When I was using my Ancestry dot com subscription to find various types of information, I did quite a bit of copy/paste operations. (I am now waiting for more upgrades before I tackle anything pertaining to census information.) At the bottom of the index for the person, there are three paragraphs with headings Source Citation, Source Information and Description -- with a hyperlink to learn more. Using the California Birth Index, 1905-1995 as an example, I copied the Source Information paragraph into footnote field, and then copied just the "Original Data" portion into the Short Footnote and Bibliography fields. Perhaps something similar will work for you.

Note: My basic database is about seven years old, so I haven't added many new people recently.

Regarding EE: at first I was about to "follow to the letter", but there has been quite some discussions about how overly detailed it is. Even before that, I had always wondered why EE has been "the cat's meow" for source citations. So, when I got around to asking, someone did point out a couple of competitors to EE. I guess the main thing is to be consistent in citations -- which I'm not

Cheers, Glenn

[Vyger]

I also don't intend to jump into any great changes to my database until I fully understand the ramifications. There is the source issue and another important one for me is the extra Place Detail fiends and how it affects geo coding.

Somewhere on the Blog, Bruce did promise small video tutorials being made available, I am waiting for these in the hope they shine some light on the best practices here.

[bienia]

the extra Place Detail fiends

Who are these "fiends"? A freudian slip!

[Glenn]

Tutorials are broken down into three sections:

http://rootsmagic.com/fs/Tutorials/RM4_FSSync.htm

http://rootsmagic.com/fs/Tutorials/RM4_FSCentral.htm

http://rootsmagic.com/fs/Tutorials/RM4_FSMatch.htm

Glenn

[RWells]

Glenn

Are there other tutorials. These you shared were great.

Thanks
Roger

[Glenn]

Roger
At this point, I don't remember where I found them, but I'm pretty sure I started with RootsMagic Home page. I do remember that I started looking at one and noticed it had a expanded URL. So I saved that into my favorites (bookmarks), used the main browser's back arrow (uppermost left), and repeated the process for URLs # 2 and #3.
Sorry, no more -- just the family of three . Maybe the big bad wolf can find you the fourth little piggie or all ten .
Glenn

[Romer]

Some additional fs-related tutorials have been added at:

http://www.rootsmagic.com/fs/

They seem to be added periodically, so you'll want to check back every so often.

As for a general RM4 tutorial, it can be found at:

http://rootsmagic.com/tutorials/rm/

I wonder if this location will be the one where additional ones covering non-fs topics (including source templates, to get back on topic ) are added, so you may want to take a look here from time to time, as well.

[Don Newcomb]

I also don't intend to jump into any great changes to my database until I fully understand the ramifications. There is the source issue and another important one for me is the extra Place Detail fiends and how it affects geo coding.

Me too. I tend to lump citations in broad categories; such as 'census', 'certificate of death', etc.; then specify the details in the citation. I feel that setting up a separate source for the 1870 census of Orleans Parish, La. would just make it hard to find the source when I need to cite it again. Having a different source for each piece of paper would be impossible. The other thing is that I'm not trying to prove anything to the heralds. Not trying to assert a claim to a dormant title or armorial bearings. So, there's a lot of stuff in my database that's not backed up by certified copies of original documents. I try to have at least one general (e.g. published book) or fact (e.g. death certificate) source for each person in my database. If that source is the IGI (which I consider to be totally worthless as a source), so be it. In some cases I'm not so much trying to build a chain of evidence, as I am following bread crumbs which will either lead me to evidence or to specific people (lost cousins) who might have evidence. Sometimes I just want to document why I jumped to the conclusion to which I jumped.