This clean up of my Find A Grave memorials has been really helpful. What I started with, was to Move any Find A Grave entries, in the Person Notes field, to the Find A Grave Memorial # Fact Notes Field. I had notes in both places but wanted them ALL to be in the Fact Notes.
I have only reviewed the start of the alphabet, up to the letter D. I am doing a Surname by Surname letters to keep track of where I am. Using the Filter In Feature, I used the Find A Grave Memorial # Fact as my Filter.
As I finish a letter or series of names, I remove them from the Filter. So, it's easy to keep track of where I am.
To date: I have reduced 35 Pages of Person Notes, and have added 11 Pages of Fact Notes. Going in the right direction, as I had hoped. I have 322 profiles that have the Find A Grave Fact.
As I am doing this review, I look at the Burial Fact, to make sure that the Cemetery in that Fact is in my "Cemetery" database, which is a Citation. I have 81 Cemeteries in that Database. So far, that means that ALL of the Cemetery Information from the Find A Grave website, is ALL in ONE place. I had a number of Burial Fact Notes with information about the cemetery, which is why I created the Cemetery Database. That database is anything I can find on the Find A Grave website about the cemetery, including physical locate, contact information (some time), former Cemetery Names, most helpful, and other comments. I don't have to remember to put cemetery information in the Burial Fact Notes.
Also, with the focus on Find A Grave, I was reminded that when there was a change in "ownership" of the Website other things changed. For example, some Memorials did NOT have Cemetery Locations. Many of those Memorials were removed. I HAD marked, in the ToDo list, those memorials in two ways. The ToDo list AND in the Find A Grave Memorial # Fact AFTER the number. So, looking at the Find A Grave custom report I created, I could SEE those memorials I used to have, that no longer exist.
At last count, there are 30 such memorials that no longer exist. But, some of them had been replaced. I have been tracking that. I had 79 "missing" memorials, so I have been finding some of them.
I have also made sure that IF I have a Find A Grave Index record, that I also have the information from the Find A Grave website. I have about 65 of those identified.
As I have been doing in the past, but have been really focusing on this Clean Up (Genealogy Do-Over, my style) to make sure that I have my Evernote Notebook Up to date.
Time consuming, yes, but so worth the time an effort when I do more work on my Prep work for the 1950 Census Release.
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Copyright © 2021 by Cousin Russ
Copyright © 2021 by Cousin Russ
So why do all of this Clean Up ??
ReplyDeleteMostly for me. I had been very frustrated when working on my file to STOP and do some house cleaning (Tree Cleaning, FILE Cleaning). Moving information to where is should be NOW, based on changes made in earlier versions of Family Tree Maker.
I am confirming that my Find A Grave Clean Up is ready for the "Work in Progress" that will be done going forward.
I can see, in the Find A Grave # (Memorial Number) that the number is wrong:
61627186 - This memorial has been removed
If I want to work off of my ToDo List, I see the same thing:
This memorial has been removed - 61627186
The wording is in a different order, but that is for SORTing in a Custom Report OR in my TaskList for the "Find A Grave - Removed" Task Category.
I can see it as I go or I can work off of the ToDo List.
For me, it is SO worth the time.
Hi Russ, I'm a big fan of your YouTube videos. I've learned so much but I have a problem. I've been trying to clean up my sources from Ancestry in my FTM but everytime I sync Ancestry changes them back! I've got at least 5 years of clean up to do and this is very frustrating. I use Ancestry heavily so I have to sync. Any ideas? Thanks, Shery Hart
ReplyDeleteSheryl,
ReplyDeleteDon't have that issue. But, I know that changes ALL of our citations !!
So, if you Download, not Sync, your citations WILL be changed.
Russ
Hi Russ. Could you please post one of your cemetery citations here so we can see what you are doing. Also, do you do similar for places? I've found FTM frustrating in that you can't post text or photos against a place but now you are giving me ideas.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Lauren
Melbourne, Oz
Lauren,
DeleteI will post a citation in a day or two. I am not at the computer that has those citations. I will post later in the week.
As to the Place field in the FACT screen, please go to the Help menu and give feed back to Family Tree Maker.
I handle this in the FACT Notes for a Fact that is impacted.
Russ
I'm also interested in how you do that citation. Do you have a separate source for each cemetery, or one source with many citations? Thanks for terrific articles.
DeletePS - your cleaning up work is impressive!
DeleteLauren,
DeleteSorry for the delay:
Here is one of my "Cemetery Database" Citations
Cemetery Find A Grave, database, Find A Grave (https://www.findagrave.com : accessed 07 June 2019) California, Los Angeles, Los Angelis National Cemetery.
It uses the "Online Database (Cemetery Derivative)" Source Template
Russ
Ken,
DeleteThis is ONE Source Group, with many Citations, one for each Cemetery. For me, it is my Cemetery Database. I did it so that I didn't have to put Details about a Cemetery on each Profile. The Burial Fact, with the Cemetery Name, will have at least 2 citations. One is from Find A Grave, the 2nd is my Database. There also may be an Ancestry Index citation as well.
The Citation Text field as the details about the Cemetery from the Find A Grave website.
Russ
Hi Russ, can you elaborate on your "cemetery" database.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Shery Hart
Shery,
DeleteIf you think about the Find A Grave website, there are really 3 databases. Contributors, Profiles, and Cemeteries. I had been adding Cemetery information into Burial Facts for each of those Cemeteries into the Fact Notes.
I would forget or copy/paste many times with the same information. So, through a Citation (example above), I have a Citation based, Cemetery "database". I copy and paste the information about the Cemetery, at the Cemetery level on Find A Grave, and put that into the Citation Text (which is NOT included in the Reference Note)
The reason what this is important, to me, is that I have found "former" Cemetery Names, locations is most important, contact information some times, but it's all in one place.
When I review my Burial Facts, I should see at least 2 Citations. One if from the Find A Grave website Citation, and the second in the "Cemetery" database citation.
Hope that helps,
Russ