When creating a new Source Template, when one adds a field, the dialog has a check box to designate the field as a “Source Details” field. What does that mean – in practical terms? Thanks for the heads up!
The field becomes part of the citation portion of the Source.
1 Like
Every footnote sentence is divided into two parts - the part that comes from the “source” and the part that comes from the “citation”. When you are making a source template, a field marked as Source Details field is a “citation” field and a field not marked as a Source Details field is a “source” field.
This concept is pretty simple in theory, but it can be terribly confusing in practice. It doesn’t help that RM is all over the place in what it calls things. Sometimes it speaks of “Sources” and “Citations”. Other times it speaks of “Master sources” and “Source details”. They are two different ways to refer to the same things. The final footnote that prints in a report takes data from both places.
Think of it as “big” vs. "little. If you were making a source template for census, the master source fields (source fields) might include “big” things like the census year, the state, and the county. The source details fields (the citation) might include “little” things like the census page and the census family number.
Citations & sources sounds straight forward but its unlikely something most people are going to learn within a week to make good use of. Understanding might be less than 2 days. The way things work in RM in not so bad in my opinion but the term/lingo gets confusing.
The other confusing part is two people can divide the smaller and bigger parts and basically achieve the same result