Hi Folks - Thank you in advance for helping me here. I have been using RootsMagic for nearly 20 years. For about half of that time, I was not entering citations and sources correctly. Also, I was not consistent with mistakes. And then there were those times when I knew what I was doing, but entered them sloppily because I was in a hurry. Needless to say, my sources and citations are now a quagmire. I have 680 people in my tree. I have several hundred sources with even more citations. Can you recommend any tips and tricks on how to make this all look pretty? Should I start over? If you had a similar experience, how did you correct it? I am looking for a strategy so I don’t have to manually go through every source and citation to make it right. I am currently using RootsMagic 8.
I’d never recommend the “start over” route.
I have about 40,000 people in my database, although I’m constantly trying to reduce the number of people I keep in the database so my research can be more focused. I’m down to 40,000 from a peak of about 60,000. So I probably couldn’t fix all my source/citation quagmires, even in several lifetimes. So why start?
What I’m doing instead is fixing all my source/citation quagmires for a small subset of the people in my database. For my present project, I’m working on all the all my great grandparents and all their descendants who are no longer living. In other words, these are recent and close relatives for whom I’m willing to publish data online because the people are deceased. I have 238 people in this collection. That’s a more manageable problem than is working on 40,000 people.
Fixing my source/citation quagmire is a slow process. The one good thing I’m discovering is that fixing a source/citation for one particular person also tends to fix the same source/citation problem for several other people. For example, people often share a census source/citation, an obituary source/citation, etc. And the RM8/9/10 feature to be able to reuse citations helps a great deal in this regard.
That makes me feel a little less intimidated. How do you keep track of what sources/citations you have fixed and what still needs fixing?
I too have been using RM for some 20 years and my sources are not consistent, but hopefully improving as I progress in my research. However, although my format is not 100% consistent, I have generally cited them in such a way so that I or a user of my online research can go back and revisit what the source I used actually said. Looking pretty is for me is not much of an issue, but being able to locate and look at the source a 2nd or 3rd time if needed is important. I do try to be as consistent as possible in the way I add new citations.
Making sources a “servant” of our research and not the primary focus of our research is important. The goal should be improving the way we research our families. It is possible to have great looking sources, but poor quality research. It is difficult to be attending to research problems and spending immense energy on the way one presents the source in excruciating detail at the same time.
I am one of the people considered a “lumper”. For example, I might have a general source such as 1850 U.S. Federal Census for the source, and then the place in the details section to which I can add the ED or page number. I don’t use the Census fact. I use the census as a source. Also, I do not feel the need to say whether the particular census came from microfilm, Ancestry, FamilySearch, etc.
I do try to think about how my sources might look in printed reports. I want them to be clear and reasonably presented. Shorter rather then longer makes for better looking reports when printed out.
For various reasons I still use RM7 as I am comfortable in that version creating new sources and revising ones that need improving. I have many that are free form but use the templates for basic books. I also like the simplicity of data entry with version 7. I use RM10 when I need to compare with the FamilySearch database.
There are times when I am so involved with solving an issue that I make the source really simple. I will use a general source, say Marriage Record with the detail online at Ancestry. I can then go back and change to more detail should I choose, but at least I have enough information to know I should do a repeat search on Ancestry.
As far as revising your list, you might do it a little at a time. Go down through your alphabetical list, checking wording, spelling, etc. and correcting as necessary. You could do this an hour at a time, and over time make improvements rather than tackling large numbers of revisions all at once.
I do the source/citations one person at a time, doing all the source/citations for that one person. So I work with a list of people rather than with a list of sources and citations. I just sort of eyeball the sources and citations for each person in the Edit Person screen, one fact at a time.
I have a group of the people. I work with a list of the people created by using People List View filtered by the group. I sort the list by birth date, working from the earliest birth date to the most recent birth date. It’s therefore upsetting when People List View regularly loses its sort and I have to reestablish it by clicking the top of the birth date column. I have created a special dummy fact that doesn’t print on reports or anything like that. When I’m done with a person, I add the dummy fact to the person and enter the date I completed the person into the Description field. I show that Description field in People List view.
Thinking about this, I can see just starting clean by adding people and the sources the way you want. The key would be have an organized plan, such as doing it by Surname, or Family Group, etc.
Taking your existing database, the approach might be to look at a Source/Citation and correct to your specs. This might be better and you might attain your goal sooner.
Creating Groups would likely help you keep track of your work. Create the group and when you fix someone, give them a color.
Hear Hear!
Since I started researching in the last century the number of images of original documents has increased exponentially and, using those, my research has revealed previously unknown family members, mis-transcribed records, etc. For example the LDS site is increasingly showing images of its records online meaning less trips to their nearest FHC. Recently I found scans of parish records for Wellington, Shropshire from 1701 - 1820 live on the LDS site - 852 pages of them, many not having been transcribed. Very useful to me as 2 of my lines start there.
I tidy up my records when going back over previously recorded lines but would rather spend my time on research - attaching the actual images to the facts for the benefit of others (on Ancestry).
I agree with mscheffler and Charlie_Allingham (and I think most people probably do) that the most important thing is to include enough info in the source for you or someone else to find the source again. Having a beautifully consistent source citation structure that follows someones idea of what a source should look like is nice but not usually necessary. If you were publishing your research in a scholarly journal, they would probably require some standard citation method but most of us will never do that.