I lean the other way on source info. I think that most viewers of reports or web pages that I produce appreciate more of a lean and mean presentation. Sum up the facts and stories in a nice, (quickly) readable way. Don’t bore the reader with sources, except in special cases where knowledge of the source, itself, is of interest. Yes, this means that I often have multiple source citations for the same event or note. When there is any ambiguity, I add a comment to the unprinted comment section of the source detail, saying which fact is backed up by this citation. A future researcher will figure it out, while present day readers of reports/webpages will not run out of patience while slogging through a lot of detail.
I imported a file of data by a well-respected researcher, but he had placed many source details in the general notes, rather than using proper source citations. (E.g., multiple census transcripts, death records, comments by other researchers, etc.) While I, as a researcher, am glad to have this source information, it results in horribly long, verbose reports. Boring to the average reader. In your sample event, I would rather read something like: “Sarah was living with her family at 22 Cottage St.,... in 1920. At age 18, she was not in school but could read and write.” The rest goes elsewhere. The birth year should be in the regular birth or alt birth field, as ‘About 1902’. The mother’s occupation should be with the mother’s notes/events. Keep the overall reports concise. (Actually, I do not see the need for any such event for Sarah. I would rather have a single marriage event, or head of household event, for the whole family for the 1920 census.) Although I rarely use the notes fields associated with the built-in vital events, I do still agree that reports often have an awkward sequence of items. Ward From: Evelyn .. Sent: Saturday, 9 July, 2016 10:51 AM To: Legacy User Group Subject: Re: [LegacyUG] Events & Sources Hi Martha, I actually do that also. I use the SourceWriter for creating the source, but I don't enter the transcript/abstract in the source details. Once the source is entered, I can copy & paste the source to the bottom of the transcript/abstract. I put the transcript in the event notes space so I can customize it for each person with comments below the source. If the data applies to more than one person I can cut & paste the information and change just the comments. The automatic SourceWriter sources are good for the narrative book reports. The superscript numbers are less obtrusive and don't interrupt the flow of the narrative reports. These are reports that I run for family members who are interested in the person's story, but are not interested in the details. I include sources at the end of each person's narrative report because I just cannot leave sources out. For the Individual/Family Group Record reports, I do not want to have to flip from the event page to the end of the report to find out which source belongs to which event. Having the source listed with each event transcript/abstract makes it immediately clear where it came from. I wrestled with the 2 very different audiences that my reports go to and ended up with 2 methods of sourcing. Sample of event notes: Birth: 1902 Place: MA, USA 22 Cottage Street; dwelling no 256; family no 278; ... [deleted for brevity] ... Sarah R. Rix; daughter; female; white; 18 yrs old; single; not in school; can read & write; born MA; father born Canada speaks English; mother born MA; bookkeeper in shoe factory; wage earner; ... [deleted for brevity] ----- source ----- 1920 U.S. census, Norfolk, Massachusetts, population schedule, Weymouth, enumeration district (ED) 278, sheet 12A, p. 187, dwelling 256, family 278, Sarah R. Rix; digital images, Heritage Quest Online; citing National Archives and Records Administration microfilm T625, roll 724. Repository: Heritage Quest Online, 789 E Eisenhower Parkway, PO Box 1346, Ann Arbor, MI 48106-1346, USA. ----- notes----- birthdate calculated from 1920 census minus 18 years old = 1902 It's always interesting to see how others do thing. Thanks, - Evelyn On Fri, Jul 8, 2016 at 2:58 PM, Martha Graham <martha...@gmail.com> wrote: Evelyn & Shirley, Thank you for the ideas on Events, etc Long ago [almost 20 years] when I began using Genealogical software, I included the source of an abstracted or transcribed document at the bottom of the abstract or transcript. When Legacy came along with it's 'Source Writer', I tried it and found that the process was so blasted tedious, I went back to my original idea of having the source as part of the transcript. I know that this will cause shudders of horror, but believe me, it saves oodles of time with data input and accomplishes the goal of having the source bound to the event in a way that works with no hitches. It prints out just fine, is where it belongs in the grand scheme of things and does not get forgotten. In fact, I copy and paste the source to the bottom of the page before ever abstracting or transcribing. If I am entering the event directly in to Legacy as a copy and paste, it still goes in the notes section first, then the info slots are filled, then the abstracted data is entered in the notes section. Save and if it is a shared event, then do the share. In the scenario I described earlier, putting info and sources from both a DC and a Vital Record in the same event would not work because of the different dates. But having two events connected to a death could be accomplished by creating another Event Definition: Cause of Death. Because the two events are close together in time - not more than a few days at most, they would still fall into chronological order. Thanks for your help. Martha
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