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Emy

Entering Birth Certificates

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When Elizabeth Shown Mills wrote her book Evidence: Citation & Analysis for the Family Historian, her recommended format for birth registrations would result in each birth record being one

TMG Source, and the TMG v. 7 template is consistent with this approach. In her newer book, Evidence Explained, on page 458 (2nd ed.) she recommends that birth registrations be set up so that the birth records held at one office would be a Source and the specific information for a particular birth record (name of child, date, book and page or certificate number) would be placed in a Citation Detail instead. If one enters each birth certificate as a single Source, the Source list could become quite long just with birth records.

 

Has anyone set up Source Elements, etc. to be consistent with this way of entering birth records? If so, how did you do so?

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Emy,

 

I've continued to process birth registrations as single use items in the source list unless the source is a page from a registry that has more than one entry of interest. In my mind this is a more functional way to do it and depending on how rigorous your backup schedule is and how much data entry you do could potentially save a lot of work should the worst case happen and a single entry for hundreds of births get blown away. I do attach them all to the proper repository created for the city/county/state agency that holds the original record.

 

I know this doesn't provide any help on your question, just thought I'd throw my methods out there

 

 

Dave

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When Elizabeth Shown Mills wrote her book Evidence: Citation & Analysis for the Family Historian, her recommended format for birth registrations would result in each birth record being one

TMG Source, and the TMG v. 7 template is consistent with this approach. In her newer book, Evidence Explained, on page 458 (2nd ed.) she recommends that birth registrations be set up so that the birth records held at one office would be a Source and the specific information for a particular birth record (name of child, date, book and page or certificate number) would be placed in a Citation Detail instead. If one enters each birth certificate as a single Source, the Source list could become quite long just with birth records.

 

Has anyone set up Source Elements, etc. to be consistent with this way of entering birth records? If so, how did you do so?

 

Yes. When Ancestry or FamilySearch or similar sites draw create an extracted database from public record, such as Nevada Marriages or California Births, I use the template for Electronic Website, with the original source as the website -- usually adding [database online at Ancestry.com] or similar to the database title, and then call out the master site as the Repository. For patron submissions, I use the template for Electronic Database (Family File), again using the master site as the Repository. Recently, I used that Electronic Database (Family File) as a template for a custom source type which I called Electronic Database (Commercial, extracted Records). This can cause an issue down the road, since I now have two ways of sourcing the same type of material. If you don't want to spend time later cleaning up housekeeping problems, think carefully about what you want to do, and use or design a source type to accommodate your need.

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I have a source that states eg RGO UK (as opposed to RGO Australia, RGO NZ etc) and I use this for all certificates issued under civil registration. The reference for the certificate is placed in the detail and the information from the certificate is in the memo. For me, it is unimportant where I got the certificate as the reference will enable anyone to check it in future, either online, in person or by post. Perhaps this would also work for you.

Marlene

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Hi Emy,

 

You mention "this way of entering birth records". I don't think Ms. Mills has anything to say about whether sources should be entered in TMG split as separate entries in the TMG Master Source List (MSL), or lumped as fewer entries in the MSL. She does have excellent suggestions about how the documentation of a source should be output in reports for Short Footnotes, Full Footnotes, and Bibliographies. But the templates in her books are not data entry templates, they are report output templates.

 

If you have experimented with customizing TMG source templates for a while, and reviewed the long running discussion of "lumping" versus "splitting" both in this Forum and the TMG-L ListServ, you will have discovered that usually you can produce the exact same Ms. Mills report output from either split or lumped TMG MSL source entries. The Footnotes can either have some of the data entered in separate split MSL source entry elements, or that separate data entered in parts of the CD and/or CM of separate citations to one lumped MSL entry. Further, TMG will combine entries from different split MSL sources in to a single lumped bibliographic output entry if the different multiple split Bibliography templates are made to output the identical text by leaving out their differing “split” information. Thus whether you use split or lumped TMG source templates is usually only a matter of your personal taste in data entry and ease of finding sources in the TMG MSL. Either can usually produce Ms. Mills type of output.

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I just don't see an issue with having lots and lots of sources in the MSL. If it says I have used 3300 sources, well, I have used 3300 sources. I prefer one source per document. THat allows me to use the TMG source number as part of my filing system and it allows me to attach a scan of the document to the source. Once I have used a source, I'm not going to use it again, so it really doesn't matter to me how large the MSL gets.

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