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Guest Michael Dietz

Source citation for location(s)

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Guest Michael Dietz

While looking up the lat/long for places I find information about the place which has no direct bearing on the individual at that place but which is very interesting from a historical standpoint. An easy example would be the origin of the name for the place. I put this information in the Comment field of the Master Place Record with a text link to the source. That looks clunky to me. I could put a custom tag in the individual pointing to the source but if I have a hundred individuals who have lived there then I have to have the tag in a hundred records.

 

My question is: Is there a way to have the source in the Master Source List, have the citation to it be in the Comment field, and still have the source appear in the bibliography of reports and Second Site? My understanding is only those sources cited within people records appears in the output(s).

 

Thank you for any suggestions and comments on this.

Mike

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Hi fellow New Mexican and fellow Michael!

 

I share your concern. I have not found a good way to deal with these citations either. For a few of my places where I have further information about the location, I have created a Location Pseudo Person, and created custom tags to add to that "person" for recording information about that place. I am not satisfied with this approach, but it does let me link this Pseudo Person with a custom role to regular tags for people associated with this place. It is also a handy mechanism to record name changes of locations and other such information. If you want more details, I have a naming scheme and custom Name Style for such "people".

 

This may not answer your question, but may give you ideas,

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Guest Michael Dietz

Hey Michael, hope you are not getting as much snow as we are. UGH!!! (We are in the Manzanos).

 

I have tried the pseudo person approach you mentioned and as you say it is not a really "nice" way of doing it. The best I have been able to do is put a citation to the source in one of the individuals related to the place. That gets it in the bibliography for Second Site and any Journals. Then in the Comment all I need to do is give a statement such as "From The History of Ross County". That is a clue to look in the bibliography for that source.

 

Maybe we should ask for such a capability in the next release.

 

Mike

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No, Mike, not getting the snow you are :D I am in the Albuquerque North Valley so at a much lower elevation.

 

Yes, I would like to have "something" for this situation, but not sure what to ask for. When us users have made "wishes" before it has been clear that the more precisely defined and detailed, but at the same time simple and general purpose and flexible, the better. And any proposal wants to be sure not to break any existing usage/practice.

 

I previously made a proposal to allow a way to cause a source to appear only in the bibliography. I "wished" that excluded FF and SF templates not produce any output. The TMG Help seems to imply that if you have both a Full Footnote and a Short Footnote template of simply exclusion characters (dashes, i.e. either '-' or '--') that there should be no FF or SF output produced, but a Bibliography entry should still be made. Unfortunately this does not work. You do get the Bibliography entry but you still get a numbered FF or SF entry, no text only the number. I have cases where I want the Bibliography to include certain reference works to show that I have researched them, but this group of people in this report may not have a specific citation since they were not mentioned. Having the Bibliography entry but no citation implies that I did look but they were not there, which can be valuable information. In your case you could cite the place source with such excluded templates on appropriate tags and then anyone with that citation that was included in a report would produce the Bibliography entry for that source. And for your own purposes you would see the citation on the Details screen to remind you about the source for this place.

 

Would my proposal work for you? If not, what specific proposal would you make?

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Guest Michael Dietz

Thank you Michael.

 

Basically all I would like is the ability to cite a source after the text in the comment, much as we now do with a tag entry. Then some type of indication there is a citation would be listed at the end of the comment and the source would appear in the bibliography. I don't think there would need to be a short footnote as with an individual's detail in a report. The only time anybody would be aware of the source would be someone reading the comment. If nobody looked at the comment they would not have any reason to search the bibliography.

 

As for having individuals who are connected with the place also indicating the source, I think that would be overkill. In my usage the source is specific to the place, not the individual. Again I give the example of the origin of the name of the place. If the individual had a role in that process then there would be some type of tag giving the connection, otherwise there would be none. For example if the Duke of Alburquerque was in my family tree then his data would have the tag stating Albuquerque was named for him with the appropriate citation which would also be in the comment of the place. My being a resident of Albuquerque would not have any connection to the source.

 

Your idea of using the bibliography as a list of research items is a very interesting concept and I am going to try it for some of the books I have been downloading from Google Books.

 

Thank you again for the replies.

Mike

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Hello New Mexicans and others,

 

I have read this thread with interest.

 

Michael Hannah, I would be interested in your conventions for naming your "pseudo place persons". I have never used name styles, but it might be time to learn!

 

I would definitely support the proposal for a "bibliography only" source. I enter all the sources that I review, even if I don't have a reference to them. Maybe just a checkbox or maybe even the program could just "know" to do this as you say the "help" implies.

 

I have been using "pseudo place people" for places, but I have a broad definition of "place". For example, I might have a county name with information about county history, population, county formation data, overall census statistics, etc. But I also might have a church building that has a photo of the church and maybe a history of the congregation, etc. I am also considering "cemetery people" but I haven't actually implemented that yet. One could include a cemetery map, location data, as well as linking the people who are buried there so one could produce a report on the cemetery and who is buried there.

 

I am not exactly sure what I will do with this information yet. For now, I am just using it as a way to accumulate and organize information. I would assume that I would draw on this information to write custom memos, journal intro tags, etc. for my actual people. I was also thinking that it might be cool to be able to assemble a bibliography / source list for a place.

 

Great discussion!

 

Jane Neuman

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Hi Jane,

 

You asked: I would be interested in your conventions for naming your "pseudo place persons".

 

I define the Given name as the specific subdivision/location (e.g. “Adams Township”) and the Surname as the complete higher level locale, comma separated, beginning with smallest (e.g. “Washington County, Ohio”). I choose to place the country in the Suffix so I can define whether to output it by selecting an alternate name style.

 

Examples of Location Names

Given [Location]	  Surname [Locale]			  Suffix [Country]													USA					  Ohio						  USAWashington County	 Ohio						  USAAdams Township		Washington County, Ohio	   USA

A location is linked as Mother/Daughter-Oth with the larger locale person (e.g. in the above list each entry would be the mother of the entry below it, a mother with given name “Washington County” surname “Ohio” would have a daughter with given name “Adams Township” surname “Washington County, Ohio”). My two location name styles (one with country in the output, one without) display these names in picklists with the name parts separated by colons since the surname can have internal commas. I also define custom labels (i.e. [Location], [Locale], [Country]) for the name parts as a data entry aid. Finally, the Surname and Given displays and sorts have fixed text at the beginning (e.g '+LOC: ' and 'Loc: '). This text forces these "people" to sort ahead of all "real" people and display with a reminder of the type of pseudo person. When you save the new name style this text will give you a warning message, but if you accept it the text works as desired.

 

Location Female Name Style Templates

Given [Location]						  next lower level of location subdivision below surname localeSurname [Locale]						  locale complete to next larger subdivision above detail,										   comma separated, beginning with smallest, minus countrySuffix [Country]						  countryOutput for “Location” style			   [Location], [Locale]Output for “LocationCountry” style		[Location], [Locale], [Country]Surname sort							  +LOC: [Country]: [Locale]: [Location]Surname display						   Loc: [Country]: [Locale]: [Location]Given sort								+LOC: [Location]: [Locale]: [Country]Given display							 Loc: [Location]: [Locale]: [Country]Children/Siblings for “Location” style	[Location]: [Locale]Children/Siblings for   “LocationCountry” style				[Location]: [Locale]: [Country]

I often use a custom "Created" tag (in the Birth group) for location people. Their Created tag may have no date, unless you wish to document the existence of this name for this location being time limited. Since I wish them to sort alphabetically, I force an order by leaving their Created sort date empty and placing a numbering order in their BIRTHORDER flags. From the Person View of any daughter, edit the BIRTHORDER flag and click on the “Siblings” heading to sort by name, then set all the BIRTHORDER values to consecutive numbers. The location pseudo person does not have to directly match an entry in the Master Place List, but the location for the Created tag usually would be an MPL place entry associated with the primary name but could be its oldest MPL entry.

 

I have a custom FLAG that is named PSEUDO and I set all location people to 'L' so I can easily filter for "real" or "location" people. So far, I have adopted the following conventions:

  • Male pseudo people: Sources (e.g. all Census people), Surnames
  • Female pseudo people: Location, Repository, Examples, Research efforts, Ships
  • No Gender pseudo people: Date/Time

Thus my convention would make a location person Female. I link location people to my census people so that I can easily identify what census records I have for that location, and "marry" a male census person with a female location using a custom "CenLink" tag in the Marriage group.

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Hmmm.

 

Thanks. That's a lot to chew on.

 

I am always amazed at how complex and well thought out some of these strategies are. There is so much to think about and learn from you veteran users. You have developed these over time in response to your needs and your strategies often contain fixes for issues I've never even thought of! Who ever thought of having pseudo people getting "married" and "born" in a sense???

 

So, just to be sure I understand .... you have a pseudo source person who is a male and you marry that to a female pseudo location person? Why would you do that rather than just attaching a source to a tag in the pseudo location person? Same for pseudo surname people? I can see that this would give you the ability to see surnames that were associated with a location, but why wouldn't you just run a LOP report filtering for events in a location to get that info? When you're all done, what kind of output [either report or info in the PV] do you get for a pseudo location person using your method?

 

Thanks for sharing, Michael.

 

Jane Neuman

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So, just to be sure I understand .... you have a pseudo source person who is a male and you marry that to a female pseudo location person? Why would you do that rather than just attaching a source to a tag in the pseudo location person? Same for pseudo surname people? I can see that this would give you the ability to see surnames that were associated with a location, but why wouldn't you just run a LOP report filtering for events in a location to get that info? When you're all done, what kind of output [either report or info in the PV] do you get for a pseudo location person using your method?
I started doing Location People for the census. I don't do them for all locations, but I have done them for all my census locations. I "marry" a location to a census whenever there are "children" who are a specific census source, and give the marriage a "say" date of the year to sort before the childrens' birth/creation dates of just the year. I "lump" my census sources to the county or film whichever is smaller. The "marriage" allows a double click on the "spouse" to change from location to census or back. The Census person shows me all the locations I have recorded, and the Location person shows me all the census years I have recorded. The list of "children" allows me to quickly see what census sources I have for this location/year, and double clicking on the son will show me all the enumerations I have recorded from that source. For example, I can go to the Given="Wayne County" Surname="Michigan" Location person and see that I have entries from both the 1920 and 1930 Census since there are two source "sons": Given="1920 Census" Surname="USA, Michigan, Wayne" and Given=1930 Census"... Because this person is "married" to Given="1920 Census" Surname="USA, Michigan" I could go to that person and see all the counties in Michigan where I have census records for that year, and that same 1920 son for Wayne County is listed in that PV.

 

The PVs are what I really like about this method, especially for the census. If I am in the library viewing a microfilm and come across a surname of interest, the PV of that source gives me a quick way to verify that I already have recorded that family. I find the PVs of the Census people and the Location people more useful to me than LOP reports.

 

As for reports using these people, an Individual Narrative of a location tells me the history of that location, what alternate names it has had over time, what sources I have collected that are focused on that location, and what surnames of special interest to me are found in that location. I assign the Census source person as P2 on my Census tags, and attach a text exhibit of that enumeration to that tag. Thus the IN of a Census Source with embedded exhibits gives a transcription of all the enumerations I have recorded from that source, complete with the links to all the "real" people as Witnesses for all the enumerations. I only have a few Surname pseudo people that I created, but an IN of that person lists all the alternate spellings, a tag of the history of the name itself, and "marriages" to locations where there are major occurances of that surname.

 

Thanks for sharing, Michael.
Happy to share. As you say, the scheme has developed over time, but there is always room for improvement, so I am always looking for comments. It may sound like a lot of extra work, but for most of these locations you set them up once and then just link to them as you need. And I maintain a "cheat sheet" to remind me exactly how to set them up. I have found the investment in the time to create them has been worth it to me.

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Hey Michael!

 

It is working great. I set up Germany with a child of Württemberg with a child of Hiltenzweiler Parish. I used name styles and everything! I attached some maps and photos and entered some general history data.

 

So far I'm having a blast.

 

Thanks

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