When I started library school and sat in my first
archives class my classmates and professor were appalled when I disclosed that
I filed copies of my genealogy records in more than one place. For example, a
marriage record was filed in both the groom and the bride’s family’s folders. I
simply had not decided upon a standardized methodology for filing my paper
records yet. At least not one I could remember and subsequently recall within a
few seconds. I’m sure many genealogists have elaborate filing systems and treat
brides and grooms as “couples” or a specific “family unit” to which only ONE
copy of a marriage record would be attributed. But in my mind, that would
require remembering who each bride or groom married, more specifically, the
groom’s name and without that, I wouldn’t be able to put my hands on the
folder. So early on I decided to treat each person as their own individual and
thus, they each got a copy of their marriage record.
So as you can see, redundancy is not new to me, nor is it
necessarily a bother or inconvenience. So with that said, I would like to share
a little bit about how I use my genealogy database. I have evaluated Family
Tree Maker, Legacy Family Tree and RootsMagic and found them to be very similar
in what I like to do with my software. I eventually settled on RootsMagic
because of the ability to take it with me on a flash drive. The way I use my
genealogy software has been evolving and continues to evolve throughout the
years. Which is one reason why I have been hesitating to share what I do with
everyone. I didn’t want to come across as a mad woman. Because frankly, I still
haven’t decided how I want to do things yet. But oh well, you got to start
somewhere and I think it’s important to share and to read about what others are
doing and how they are doing it.
Speaking of, Susan Clark of the
Nolichucky Roots blog originally
started this thread with her
“Getting
Down to Basics” post in which she asked for people to offer their reasons
and ideas for using a genealogy database. She got a lot of great responses.
Check out the comments to her post to see what others had to say. I have posted
links to other blog posts below.
Ok, so here goes my whackamole approach at trying to give
you all of the reasons why and how I use my genealogy database:
1.
It’s a database and it’s searchable. So when I need to look someone up, I just type
in their name and it finds them. It does it much faster than Ancestry.com’s
online family tree.
2.
My place names are indexed in
addition to my last names. So if I am attending a conference or planning a
research trip to Oregon County, Missouri, I can run a report that will tell me
all of the people I have associated with Oregon County, Missouri or in
Missouri, period. Be sure to watch the Legacy Family Tree video or webinar on
how to enter your place names in such a way that cities and towns in Oregon
County, Missouri will also be captured in the report. This applies to all
software packages. I, unfortunately, have not implemented this organization
schema yet, have you?
3.
I use it to manage my sources to document each event. Here is a screenshot of a
birth fact for my 2nd great-grandfather, James Franklin Lasiter. I
have 9 sources for his birth date and place. A lot of people wrote about their
wish lists for software. If I had to request a change for RM4, it would be that
they include the detailed text in the summary box here at the top where it says
“Details.” And for all I know, this may be different in RM5 that was just
released. As it is now in RM4 you have to click on the source in order for the
detail text to be displayed in the bottom right hand box.
4.
Linda McCauley mentioned Research Notes in her
post
“How
I Use my Genealogy Database” using Legacy Family Tree. We have a similar
feature in Rootsmagic 4, which is a report called
Research Notes that you can run for each person. It is a
breakdown of each source and how it relates to each fact and includes notes and
so forth. The only problem I have with it is that it puts the name of the
source as a footnote and the report itself lists simply a date and place and
then a note. For this to work, you would have to include the name of the source
in the actual detailed text of the footnote. So I don’t use this feature. But
if it worked the way I would like it to work, it could probably be very
powerful. Here is a screenshot of what it looks like:
5.
One thing I’ve started doing is adding census
reports as events, in addition
to birth, marriage, death, burial, and occasionally occupation. This makes for
easily being able to determine when and where my ancestors were enumerated and
this event shows up ok on the narrative report. I have tried to add other
source-like events such as obituaries, but found they did not display well (or
at all) on narrative reports. This could be rectified if I played with my
custom settings more. What RM4 lacks in being able to copy and paste citations
between family members, it gains in being able to assign a census report to
multiple people in a family. I have found this feature to be very helpful and
time-saving. I enter the census as an event for the head of house. I then share
it with the other members of the household. I enter the information for the
census into the census notes and I add a source. When this event is shared with
other members of the house, the census note and source citation is
automatically entered into their events list. The only difference between the
head of house and the rest of the household is that the census note for the
head of house is displayed on his or her report, but not on the report of those
that the census is shared with. The report simply says “He appeared in the
household of John Riley Lasiter in the census in Jun 1880 in Tomlinson, Scott,
Arkansas, USA” with a footnote pointing to the citation. Because of this, I
make sure to copy the census note information into the general notes of the
household members. I usually do this anyways. This is one of the reasons why I
say I engage in some redundancy!
6.
Speaking of redundancy. When I first started
working with my database back when I was using Family Tree Maker, I used to put
all of my information into the citation/footnote, including my analysis and the
full text of the item being cited. This is what it used to look like. And unfortunately I still have a LOT of these left in my database:
When I transferred my database over to
Rootsmagic, something happened and now I am no longer able to run reports using
footnotes that are “that long.” So I have been trying to chop things up a bit
more and use the event notes, general notes, and footnotes as separate
entities. Unfortunately because I had been doing things for so long and had
accumulated so much data, it is very difficult to change it all even if I were
to come up with a standardized way of doing things. The two concerns I always had
were this: I wanted to be able to easily pull my research notes and analysis
out of my database quickly. And if it is scattered between birth notes, death
notes, source citation notes, etc., that always seemed like a daunting task. I
also wanted to be able to site my sources on my own just in case my footnotes
did not work; as was the case when I transferred to RM. So I often built my
source citations and then copied them into my notes. But that just cramped the
readability of my reports. Especially when the demand to share with others
increased. So now I use a hybrid system. I copy everything into my general notes, that way I can easily extract the information and copy and paste into a word document if I have to. Information entered into the rest of the program relies on my program's ability to export to a report.
7.
Census
Reports: When I used FTM, I used to include the entire census report in my
citation because it was easier to copy and paste the citation to each member
included in that household. Now I only include the line relating to the person
being cited. I include information about a census report in the general notes
always. This is what my census report looks like:
1910 Big Apple Twp., Oregon Co.,
MO
Taken 28 Apr 1910, Line 67, dw
130, fm 133
William Peters, head, 35 yo (b.
abt 1875), M1 10 yrs (abt 1900), IL Unk IL, educated yes, rents a house, farm
laborer, can read and write
Dora Peters, wife, 35 yo (b. abt
1875), M1 10 yrs (abt 1900), 5/7 kids living, AR Unk unk, cannot read or write
Herbert Peters, son, 9 yo (b.
abt 1901), MO IL AR, can read, but c/n write
Danie Peters, dau, 5 yo (b. abt
1905), MO IL AR
Vibert Peters, son, 3 yo (b. abt
1907), MO IL IL
Nova Peters, dau 1 8/12 (b. abt
1908), MO IL IL
Mary Peters, dau, <1yr (b.
abt 1909), MO IL IL
NARA Film T624, Roll 804, FHL
Film 1374817, Page 7B, ED 117
[The last 3 children's mother's
place of birth is listed as IL, but this must be a mistake as Dora was born in
AR]
This format is easy for me to
read. I add the approximate year of birth in parenthesis. Now that I include my census report information in my general notes, I no longer need to include all of the information for each household member in my citations. Now I only include the information pertinent to that household member.
And this is what my
citations look like:
It clearly states her name, age,
and place of birth. I can click through each census that is cited to see if
there are any differences. If I did not have this information included in this
footnote, I would have to go back to this person’s general notes to see what
this particular census report said for her name, age, and place of birth.
With regard to redundancy and
census reports, the head of house inevitably will have the census report show
up twice on his or her narrative report. This is fine by me. I would rather
have too much information than not enough.
8.
I’m guessing this post has gone on long enough,
so I will summarize here.
·
I add everything I know about a person in the
general notes, including transcripts of death certificates and obituaries,
census reports, land records, etc.
·
I have just started entering census reports as
their own events and I “share” them with household members.
·
I provide source information for items included
in my general notes, although the citations are not complete as I leave it up
to the footnotes to do that job.
·
I cite every source for every fact.
·
I include my analysis of evidence (ie, review of
sources) for each fact’s sources in that fact’s notes. This analysis is usually
NOT copied to the person’s general notes.
·
I only enter a fact once. If some sources point
to alternate information, I pick the best one, or a range, and I cite them all.
I do use my database to create narrative reports for myself and to share with others. But I have found that most people I share with do not care about source citations. And the narrative reports give way too much information. So I guess I would have to admit that it is used mostly for me. I think most of the below posters have come to a similar conclusion.
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