FTM2012 - Source and Citation Clean Up

Genealogy Blogger, and friend, Randy Seaver put another challenge out:

Creating a Source List Report in RootsMagic 5

I guess, that since he named be as part of a challenge, I thought I better reply. Afterall, I have committed to myself, in 2012, to clean up all of my Sources (488) and Citations to get them into the Family Tree Maker, Evidence Explained! Template format.

I have been working on the clean up and I have blogged about this in that past. I take a few "extra" steps when I create the Source Template. What I did, was to break down, so that I could understand, what comes from the Source Template Fields, and what information comes from the Citation Detail, and what comes from the Citation Text to create the EndNote or Reference Note.

Looking at the report for Randy's challenge that little extra step really helped.

Note: I keep the term SOURCE as one thing, while CITATION is something else. I have a number of Sources, without Citations. I have NO Citations without a source. Together the Source and Citation information makes up the Reference Note or EndNotes as they are created in a genealogy report.

The Publish Workspace has a Source Collection of Reports. The first one I am going to select is the Source Bibliography. That will give me a list of my Sources.

This will generate a list of all of my Sources. I will be able to tell which Sources are in the Template Format and which are not. I will use one of my 1940 U.S. Federal Census Record Sources for an example:

The data in the Yellow hi-light is text from the Comments field for that Source. That is my first indication that this Source is in the Template format. Reason: I added the information that will be needed in the Citation Detail, and the Citation Text. The items in brackets are "fill in the blank" reminders for me, what data do I get from the Source for the Citation Detail. then some text, etc.

For example: [ civil division ] is what I need to pull from the 1940 Census, like the Town Name. That is followed by "enumeration district" followed by [ _-_ ] which is taking from the the Census Sheet.

In this template example, that is all of the data that is required for the Reference Note, so nothing in the Citation Text box will be used. I enter "Record for ......", and naming the Head of Household into that field, but do NOT put a check mark in the Show in Reference Note. That is information that I want to see easily. That is already in the [ person of interest ] household entry in the Details.

From this report, on this Source, I see that I have forgotten, actually want to go back an add, the "accessed: dd mmm yyyy" in the Citation Details field, at the end of the information in the Citation Detail screen. I can get that date from the date on the Census Record, media file, linked to this citation.

There may be additional information that I will enter, IF I have the data, like Microfilm Number. My 1940 Census Records all came from BEFORE they were indexed, so some of that data was not available.

That is the Sources Report. Now for the Citations.

Publish Workspace, but Source Usage Report.

I selected Show Facts, and Show Citations, as the report was being generated. I had selected a number of pieces of information from each Census Year. I have a blank census form, with the data hi-lited, for what facts I want to capture. This will help be review that as well.

The Citation now reflects what was put into the Citation Detail field, and the Citation Text field as well as the facts. Remembering that the Citation Text should not be shown. But the Citation here is as it should be, minus the Date Accessed.

 Since I know what information I want in the Citation is in the Source Comments field, I can tell that this Citation is good. Because the order of the report would be in the Source Order, followed by the Citation Order, I found that I can get through these pretty quickly because of the pattern of data that I am looking for.

I can see when I forgot to uncheck the Include in the Reference Note, for a Census Record.

It is very obvious, in these two reports, when I haven't transitioned a Source to a Template. I am only doing this review AFTER the Source and it's citations are in the new format.

Lots of work yet to do, but these two reports are helping me clean up my Sources and Citations.

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Copyright © 2012 by H R Worthington