jamieay

Thanks Michael. So many choices and considerations! Thanks for y our thoughts!

I appreciate your thoughts, Terry. If at the output form tab of the source definition screen you set ibid to 'requires same source and CD,' does this not limit the repetition of citations in reports? Thanks Terry!

Awesome! Glad to hear someone much more experienced than I likes this idea! And it sounds like you even relegate State info to citation details? I will definitely make myself templates as I go; thank you for mentioning it. Thank you for your prompt reply, Jim!

I need to clean up my project and think I should start by cleaning up my sources. I think I must be a "lumper", since I'm tempted to condense my census sources to year & Country, and maybe province/state, and include the more specific details (Province/State?, County, film #...) in the citation details. But in my reading, it looks like the largest lumps people tend to make is a source entry for each microfilm or county. I am accessing my census info from the federal source (as opposed to ancestry or familysearch). Anybody have any words of caution before I start creating source titles such as "Census of 1851, Canada East" from Library & Archives Canada (url), and relegating all other info to citation details? Thanks so much! Jamie

Michael, my understanding re using MRINs in the case of multiple marriages, is that you use the same MRIN for all marriages of the direct line individual. So far, I'm finding that that is working out for me, but then I'm pretty green at TMG and not yet into producing a variety of reports or doing anything too fancy. I did think about setting up my MRIN system to show multiple marriages by setting my reference field to 20 characters (allowing for 4 marriages), and separating each 4-digit MRIN with a . (Eg: 0021.0053.0064). I alternatively thought about adding a letter to the end of an MRIN to indicate subsequent marriages (eg 0021a). But so far I'm keeping it simple and just going with one MRIN per direct line individual. I am happier about how my paper is organized and can find what I am looking for more easily. If neither party is a direct line individual, it is suggested you use the first marriage MRIN. Don't know if any of this would help with the reports and filtering you want to do, but... Jamie

Hmmm. Thanks for your thoughts. MRINs seem like a good way to organize the accompanying paper etc. I had wondered about using tags vs the reference field, so those ideas are really helpful. I guess I'll have to think it over some more, see if I get any other brainstorms!

I really need a better organizational strategy, and I think using the MRIN (marriage record identity number) system could be just what I need. While other programs generate MRINs automatically, TMG doesn't seem to, but I've heard that it is easy to set up. I'm hoping that someone who is using this system with TMG can tell me how to get started! Do I have to assign each MRIN manually? Can I set reports (eg. family group sheets) to show MRINs of parents? I am a fairly new user of TMG, so please type slowly! <grin> Thanks in advance!