I have a lot of sources I need to revise. They are freeform because the database was ported from another program. I was hoping I could just edit the source, and then the citations of that source would automatically reflect the changes in the source. But that does not seen to be the case. How can I also change the citations without having to edit each and every one? Do I do a “Reset to Default”, which I have seen mentioned in another post?
I’m going to assume you are using RM8. If you are using RM7, then the answer will be very different. Also, I’m guessing a little bit because I’m obviously not 100% sure of the actual nature of your sources. With those caveats, here goes.
After importing the data into RM8 and before doing anything else to clean up your sources, go into the Sources tab. Click on the THREE DOTS menu, and select in turn the Merge Duplicate Sources option and the Merge Duplicate Citations option. Having done that, any changes you make to “one source” will be applied to all instances of that source because they will have been merged, and the same is true for citations.
This will only work for sources that truly are duplicate with each other and with citations that truly are duplicate with each other. If you have sources or citations or both that are nearly the same and for all practical purposes actually are the same, you can do a manual merge from the same THREE DOTS menu.
Yes, I have RM8.
I did as you suggested. I selected merge sources. It didn’t seem to do anything. It doesn’t tell me how many sources I now have.
Then I did merge citations, and it did show that it was doing something.
I have not yet tested if it will now populate citations with changes to the source.
Now, I suppose have to combine some other sources manually using the Merge Sources command.
But alot of these “duplicates” only look like duplicates on the list. For example, I might have an interview with a person. There are two separate interviews on two separate dates. Should those be two sources or one source with perhaps different details (maybe in the citation)? I would prefer two sources. If two sources, then I should change the name of the source to indicate the date, right?
Also, in the past, I have had a “general source” for a person (such as myself) and added details depending on the circumstances. I don’t want to have myself in their 100 times. I am still figuring out how to do that in RM.
A great deal depends on which source templates you use and whether you are a “source lumper” or a “source splitter”. If you are not familiar with those terms, it simply has to do with which items of your sourcing data you put into the source part of sources and citations and which items of your sourcing data you put into the citation part of sources and citations. In RM8’s Edit Person screen, when you go into sources there will be five panels of sourcing data on the right hand side of the screen called Master Source; Master source text, media, etc; Citation details; Citation text, media, etc; and Quality. The first two panels contain source data. the last three panels contain citation data.
If you are using RM’s built-in source templates, the the decisions on how to distribute your sourcing data between these panels is made for you. If you are using RM’s free form source template or if you have defined your own source template, then you can decide which of your sourcing data is source and which of your sourcing data is citation. Please describe which template system you are using.
Or are you primarily importing data, say from GEDCOM or from FamilySearch or from Ancestry? If you are primarily importing data, then the data you are importing is making the sourcing decisions for you.
But for example, I use my own source templates and I put all sourcing data into the source part of sources and citations. With you example of interviews with the same person on two different dates, I would have two sources, one for each date. If I were putting sourcing data into both the source and citation fields, then I would probably have one source , namely the person, and then two citations, namely one citation for each of the interview dates.
“Source lumper” or “source splitter”! I have not heard the term, but I think I know what you mean! My sources are free-form, because that is how they came over from the import done by a very kind man, Jim Byram. They are free-form, so, as you say, I decide what I put where. I would prefer to have a separate source for individual interviews, but sometimes that gets too unwieldy. I would want one source for myself for example.
I am not source what you mean by that. I would think source data would always be in the citation.
Ok, so suppose you had an interview with John Doe on 1/12/2015 and another interview with John Doe on 6/30/2015. So your footnote sentences might be something like “John Doe, personal interview, 1/12/2015” and “John Doe, personal interview, 6/30/2015”. And maybe you also had an email from the same person, so you might have a footnote sentence something like “John Doe, email, 9/14/2018”. I’m not sure how Evidence Explained these footnote sentences really are, but let’s work with them anyway.
Using free from sources, you have to work strictly left to right in the footnote sentence. The logical way to do this one would be that your source would be “John Doe” and there would be three citations "personal interview, 1/12/2015”, “personal interview, 6/30/2015”, and “email, 9/14/2018”. Does this concept come even remotely close to the problem you have at hand? If not, could you post a couple of the examples you are working with?
Obviously, my made up examples are pretty simple. Citations for census and things like that can be more complicated. But I was responding to your mention of personal interviews.
By the way, as an extremely source splitter and if I were using the free forum template, I would have three separate sources - one source for each of my footnote sentences. In this case, everything would be placed in the Footnote field and the Page Number field would be left blank.
thejerrybryan,
I am struggling with citations and you seem very knowledgeable. Hope you can help! I source and then do citations in multiples off of the single source. Example: Citation Name: Jones, Steve & Terri - 1880 US Census; MA, Essex, Newbury. This citation will have several facts connected to it; i.e. name, residence, census, birth, etc. (I harvest any info from the source document/ information, break down into my facts to show then under same citation) I have at some time messed up and have multiple same facts in the citation, so I might have the name shown twice in the citation field. How do I delete just one citation from this group without deleting and doing the whole thing over? Which for obvious reasons I do not want to have to do as I have a lot! Oops RM8
Also. Any idea how to get rid of ghost citations they show in number how many facts attached but there in reality are fewer actually showing up.
Thanks, Deb
I have an answer, but there have been reports recently of duplicate citations where deleting one seems to delete both. That makes no sense to me and I don’t understand what is going on. So I don’t want to make any suggestions until I’m sure what you are seeing.
Are you looking in the main Sources tab or in the Edit Person screen when you see the duplicate citations?
When you paste citations, are you doing a Paste with Copy or a Paste with Reuse?
Have you run the RM8 tool to merge duplicate sources and also the RM8 tool to merge duplicate citations?
The reason these questions are important is that, for example, if you Paste with Copy when you apply the same citation to multiple facts, the citations will look like duplicates in the main Source and Citation screen and they will not look like duplicates in the Edit Person screen.
And by the way, the concept of having a single citation for a single census that you memorize and paste to different facts like name, census, birth, residence, etc. is perfectly normal and expected. And doing so doesn’t inherently produce multiple citations. It’s just that in RM8 you should be careful to Paste with Reuse which is a concept that didn’t exist in RM7. If you have been doing a Paste with Copy, you don’t have to go back and fix them all. Simple running RM8’s Merge Duplicate Citations tool should fix them.
Thank you for the information I will try the merge. I have been a little afraid to as I started to and it said I had over a thousand citations that could be merged and numbers were still climbing, so I cancelled.
Before you merge, are you seeing the duplicates under the Sources tab or in the Edit Person screen?
It would be good to make a backup before merging.
I am finding those duplicates under the sources tab that is to the right of the person page. When you see the citation and click that on it goes to edit citation and under citation used there will be duplicates there. And yes I am also having problems when I delete a duplicate source citation under this same sources tabs mentioned previously they are also deleting both. I have started making a copy before deleting one then I reuse paste copy. But it sure needs fixed.
Can you post a screen shot?
I did a merge citations that seemed to fix the majority of the problems. Except I am also having problems with deleting a duplicate source now on people’s page for fact and it deleted both. So am using copy feature then deleting and if both disappear I reuse. Sure needs fixed on RM side. I still am finding some ghost citations but not as many after merge. Thanks for all your help.
If the same source & citation appears on the citation list for a fact, etc. and its a duplicate link to the same citation all the duplicate links will disappear. If it’s linking to different citations then it will only remove the links going to that one on citation. These duplicate links happen when you merge people. If you clean the sources, addresses and places before hand it prevent duplicate facts or duplicate citations being saved.
I did clean and merge. No luck. I am now going through the entire source file one by one cleaning out dup’s. Easier than going person to person. lol
Hi Jerry, I merge all the citations 25,000, i was amazed at the number. I guess 35 years of sleuthing and you gain a lot! I am pretty sure that helped.
However I am still finding a lot of dup’s within the source itself list, I am pretty sure this is from the 2 files I merged. When I did a merge they did not all disappear. I am now going through those individually and eliminating those. Maybe naming those slightly different at times in the different files. I am finding the need to merge some of those as they cite different facts on same person. Is there any check all magic cure for these?
Second issue is “ghost citations” that will show example two citations to the name when looking at the source fact citations, but then going to the person it will show only 1 source listed re: the same one I just saw in source/citation page, that showed 2. Any idea how to get rid of those they are annoying!
I wasn’t sure what screenshot to send.
I really do appreciate ALL your help. You have already saved me hours & hours of work!
Deb
I’m not sure what you mean by eliminate, but it’s usually better not to delete sources. Rather, if you have duplicates in the source list that are nearly the same but not exactly the same, you can merge them manually even though they will not merge automatically. Highlight one of them while in the source list, click THREE DOTS => Merge Sources (rather that Merge All Duplicate Sources).
After doing a manual merge cleanup of duplicate sources, you could run the Merge All Duplicate Citations tool again. That might or might not merge all the duplicate citations. If not, you can merge them manually on a source by source basis. Choose a Source which has duplicate citations, click the > at the right end of the Source name to slide in the citation names, click one of the citations that’s duplicate, then THREE DOTS => Merge citations.
I’m not sure about the ghost citations. I guess the screen shot would be while looking at the “source fact citations” since that’s where you are seeing the ghosts.