How do I handle citations when the data I am citing gives a citation that can be copied and pasted? Filling out the source citations can be time consuming and tedious, so when one is given why not use it. Do I just put that in a note for the fact or put the citation elsewhere?
1 Like
The way RM works with citations is not particularly amenable to pasting a completed citation that you copied from outside of RM. To use RM the way it’s designed to be used with RM’s source templates, you would have to break the citation into is constituent parts as described by a source template. Then RM’s source template would put the constituent parts back together.
Even if you use RM’s free form source template, there would still be two constituent parts into which you would have to break up the copied citation so that RM could put the parts back together. In the RM user interface, the two parts of the free form template are called Footnote and Page Number. So what you have in putting them together is Citation = Footnote + Page Number. Don’t take the term “Page Number” too literally… Instead, think of it as Citation = Left Part + Right Part, or even better think of it as Footnote = Left Part + RIght Part.
I personally don’t much like this data model for source/citations and I would indeed like to be able just copy and paste completed citations as you wish. I think the source/citation model for genealogy writ large (not just for RM) needs a major do-over. But it’s never going to happen because there are billions of citations already out there that use the existing model and GEDCOM uses the existing model. And because of that nearly all genealogy software has to use the existing model.
So what are your choices to deal with this situation?
- You could paste your copied citations partly into the Footnote and partly into the Page Number field of RM’s free form source template as I have already described.
- You could paste your copied citations totally into the Footnote field of RM’s free form source template and leave the Page Number field blank. This would cause you to become what’s called a source splitter and you would end up with gazillion’s of sources in your source list in RM. Then each source would only have one citation.
- You could ignore the existing citation that you could just copy and use RM’s source templates to build citations of your own.
My own choice (and it’s a very personal choice that most users would not adopt) is not to use those pre-constructed citations that you can just copy and paste. Instead, I use source templates to construct citations of my own, and while I’m at it I’m a source splitter.
There is one other possibility that I’m not quite sure how it works. Namely, there is a Customize option on RM’s source and citation screens. It allows you to type in or paste in whatever text you want. So you could simply paste in your copied citation from outside of RM. What I mean by I’m not quite sure how it works is that even after you Customize a citation in this fashion, the original Footnote + Page Number fields are still there. It’s just that RM uses the customized data field and ignores the original Footnote + Page Number data fields. I don’t think you become a source splitter exactly, but I’m not sure exactly what you become.
I’m also not sure what happens if customized citations are ever transferred out of RM, for example by GEDCOM or by RM’s direct interface to FamilySearch and Ancestry. The place where RM stores its customized data is a new data field and doesn’t replace any existing data field. One thing I have discovered when playing with this feature is that it seems impossible after customizing in this fashion to uncustomize a citation and go back to standard template operation for this particular citation. I am stuck with the customization forever. In other words, the uncustomize operation does not clear the special data field that contains the customization. I think that behavior is either a bug or a design flaw.
2 Likes
I appreciate your input and explanation of how RM citations work. Seems like the best way is to just use the RM census citations, especially for GEDCOM files to be accurate and reflect what is entered in ones RM database.
Free-form citations is the reason I chose RM 20+ years ago. I make my own templates and copy and paste, changing the pertinent info. This makes consistent citations easier for me. Free-form citations were more efficient before the sliding windows were designed between full citation, short citation and bibliography (think that was RM8); however, I can live with the sliding windows. As long as free-form citations remain, I’m a RM fan!