Is a census a fact or a source?

[steve.turner]

Picking up on the question as to whether a census is a fact or a source, I agree with Jerry thejerrybryan in an earlier post today that it is both, so I record both. Just in case it’s of any help to anyone, I set out below how I’ve found I can do it

I use RM’s census Fact which I can share with other people in the household as appropriate. I currently have well over 20 roles set up for this fact type - wife, son-in-law, grandmother, to name just a few. Each role has their own custom sentence so, for example, someone given the role of Son will have the sentence [ThisPerson] is listed as the son of [person] in the Census< [Date]>< [PlaceDetails]>< [Place]>. This gives me control over what appears in Narrative Reports by allowing the same census Fact to be reported differently, according to a person’s role.

Here in the UK, apart from obvious things like name and address, the information requested changed from census to census, reflecting the social issues of the day. For example, mental illness in 1881, urban overcrowding in 1891, divorce in 1921. Thus, censuses were not all the same and I can’t think of them as anything other than separate and distinct sources.

I want to add a Source Citation to each census Fact so I’ve created a separate custom Source for each of the UK’s 10 year censuses from 1841 to 1921. In other words, I cite a ‘Census 1901’ Source for a census Fact of that date - and so on for each one. As you would expect, it records where I found the census information but I’ve also used the Source Text field to add specific explanatory information for each census, which then appears as an Endnote in my Narrative Reports. For example, when I cite a ‘Census 1891’ Source I get a note which, amongst other things, tells me this was the first time enumerators recorded the number of rooms in a house.

The value for me in all this is that the census Fact records family, place, occupation etc in the main narrative for a person whilst the custom Source puts the contextual background where it should be - in an endnote.

This is all quite a lot of work of course, but yields maximum results. For me at least, it’s worth the effort.

[thejerrybryan]

@steve.turner

but I’ve also used the Source Text field to add specific explanatory information for each census, which then appears as an Endnote in my Narrative Reports.

That’s a really interesting comment.

It’s a good thing to do, but I would have suggested that it’s impossible because RM doesn’t support it. In particular, my experience is that RM supports the Research Note and Detail Comment sections from the citation as a part of the endnotes but that RM does not support the Source Text and Source Comments fields from the source as a part of the endnotes. So I was wondering if you could provide of a citation from within the Edit Person screen which shows where this information is stored in your sources and citations. Much thanks.

[steve.turner]

Jerry, I’m grateful to you for pointing out the bit I somehow managed to accidentally miss out from my explanation !! And it is this : the Source Text then has to be manually copied into the Citation Research Note field to get it into an EndNote. Here is a screenshot from within the Edit screen which I hope shows this

[thejerrybryan]

Yep, that works.

I’m actually a source splitter, which means I enter all sourcing data into the source (the master source) and none into the citation (the source details). But I have to copy the notes for the master source to the the source details in order for the notes to be printed with the endnotes. I wish that weren’t necessary, but it is.

That being said, in addition to printed reports I publish some of my data online using a tool called GedSite. This is a third party tool, not a part of RM. It turns out that because my source notes are copied to RM’s source details (to the research note), the notes show up very well in my Web pages created by GedSite from my RM data. Similarly, I first link media files such as census images into RM at the master source level. I also copy the media links to the source details level which shouldn’t be necessary for a source splitter. But I like the way the census images and other source images show up in my Web pages created by GedSite from my RM data if the images are linked at the source details level.