Current Esxperience

[RWells]

It has been some time since we first started with Practical Citations. How has your experience been?

I am using the format but using it with Roots Magic 5 and my experience has been great. I have sent s few Family Group Sheets that use this format and no one has had questions on the sources. On person made a positive comment.

I have only 1 format and all of my sources are based on it. I created a example document that helps me keep everything close to the same. I am now going to try and create a fill in the blank form using something like type it 4 me to make it easier. Thought I would check and see how everyone else is doing prior to starting this.

I wanted to attach a screen shot but could not figure out how but this is one example.

Birth Certificate Example

Descriptive Title: Kentucky Birth Certificate
Originator: Originator: Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services
Publication Facts: Publisher: Office of Vital Statistics, Frankfort, Kentucky
Information Location: Fayette County, Year Filed 1938, Certificate Number (((((, Person of Interest XXXXX, (researched 8 October 2012)
Digital Copy: (Digital Copy: V001_034)
(Location of personal digital copy of source)
Paper Copy: (Paper Copy: B017)
(Location of personal paper copy of source)

Transcription: (Detail Text)
This certifies that the following Record of Birth is registered and preserved in the office of the State Registrar of Vital Statistics at Louisville, Kentucky. Name First, Middle, Last, sex Male, No. 999999 Date of Birth MMM,DD,YYYY, place of birth Lexington, Kentucky, RFD # 3, name of father XXXXX, maiden name of mother SXXXXX.

Roger

[lizscribe]

Hi Roger,
I like your format and the idea of keeping all of your source citations close to the same. I am just getting back to family history after a long summer of caring for an ailing father, and am still very new to Reunion. The last few days have been spent refreshing myself on creating Practical Citations. When I create a citation for a birth certificate such as you have in your example I have included the name of the person in the descriptive title. I concluded that when looking for the citation, this would make it easier to find. Could you tell me why you did not do this? I really want to get this right. I have a lot of free form citations to change and LOTS more to add.

Thanks,
Liz

[RWells]

Liz

I did not include the name in the descriptive title because that means that I would have to have a unique source for each birth certificate. So if I had 100 birth certificates then I would have 100 sources. The way I decided to do it is that I would have only one birth certificate source but with 100 different citations. I also decided that the source would only tell me where I got the item and not contain what I found. The citation would tell me where in the source I found that exact certificate within the collection.

This is just the way I do it. That dose not make it the correct way. You just need to decide how you want to do it and stick with it. Your way is just as good as mine only we differ but in my opinion as long as you stick with the way you are doing it you will be just fine.

I keep waiting for Ben to come out with the RM5 template to see how mine looks compared to his.

Roger

[marshrail]

Hi, Roger,

Maybe I’m out of the loop or forgetful, but I don’t know what the RM5 template is??
Thanks.

[RWells]

Sorry

RM5 Template is a Practical Citation templated formated for Roots Magic 5 another genealogy program. It runs on windows instead of a Mac. Ben has indicated that he would be producing a template for this sometime in the future.

Roger

[RWells]

[Ben]

@RWells said:

I am using the format but using it with Roots Magic 5 and my experience has been great. I have sent s few Family Group Sheets that use this format and no one has had questions on the sources. On person made a positive comment.

Hi Roger. I’m happy to hear it’s working well for you. My current plan is to do the RootsMagic edition after the Family Tree Maker edition I’m working on now.

—-Ben >@<

[Sue]

@RWells said:
It has been some time since we first started with Practical Citations. How has your experience been?
Roger

Hi Roger,
My experience has been great. I’ve gone through all my sources and changed them over to the practical citations format which I find easier to use and easier to share. I use my “Bento” database to make a sort of template of each type, so they’re all identical in format along with programs “Text Expander” to cut down on the tedium of typing the same thing over and “Alfred” for filing and locating files. I’m extremely happy with my workflow.
S:D

[RWells]

Sounds great. I have not gotten all of mine done yet but working on them.

I just yesterday completed an applescript that I am using with typeit4me to create a citation for a book. This makes it very easy to enter the citations as I only have to fill in the blanks. Each blank that needs information is asked for using a dialog box. When I am done it puts the results in the clipboard and all I have to do is ctl v and it is posted to the citation field. I now don’t even have to remember anything just fill in the blanks so to speak.

I next have to get the other formats working and that should only be a matter of cutting my master script and placing the needed lines into a new script to make the new one.

Roger

[marshrail]

@suzivegemite said:

I use my “Bento” database to make a sort of template of each type, so they’re all identical in format along with programs “Text Expander” to cut down on the tedium of typing the same thing over and “Alfred” for filing and locating files. I’m extremely happy with my workflow.
S:D

S-
I’m curious about what your Bento templates look like for the various types. Do you mind sharing or have you posted your templates on the Bento template website?

[Sue]

@marshrail said:

S-
I’m curious about what your Bento templates look like for the various types. Do you mind sharing or have you posted your templates on the Bento template website?

Oh heck, I’m happy to show you if you want. I hadn’t considered posting them to Bento as I couldn’t see anyone else using the same system as me. After reading a book called Paperless, a MacSparky Fieldguide by David Sparks I wanted to adopt some of the ideas into my family history research as I was always scribbling endless notes and was a mad woman with stickies. My Bento templates allow me to stick to my file naming conventions (which makes finding things a breeze) and helps me remember my text expander shortcuts (which saves on masses of typing) I have a field for the information location or detail section of my source citations so I know how I filled it in. It may say things like quarter, year, district, vol, page, persons name & date accessed. This helps me remember what order to fill these in if it’s been a while since I’ve used that particular source. My aim is for consistency and seeing as I sometimes go a few months in between frenzied bouts of research, it’s easy for the information location or detail field of my source citations to be all different in structure.
I’ll post a couple of examples when I get a minute. It may take a couple of days as we’re selling our house at the moment so researching has gone to the back burner.
S

[marshrail]

@suzivegemite said:

@marshrail said:

S-
I’m curious about what your Bento templates look like for the various types. Do you mind sharing or have you posted your templates on the Bento template website?

Oh heck, I’m happy to show you if you want. I hadn’t considered posting them to Bento as I couldn’t see anyone else using the same system as me. After reading a book called Paperless, a MacSparky Fieldguide by David Sparks I wanted to adopt some of the ideas into my family history research as I was always scribbling endless notes and was a mad woman with stickies. My Bento templates allow me to stick to my file naming conventions (which makes finding things a breeze) and helps me remember my text expander shortcuts (which saves on masses of typing) I have a field for the information location or detail section of my source citations so I know how I filled it in. It may say things like quarter, year, district, vol, page, persons name & date accessed. This helps me remember what order to fill these in if it’s been a while since I’ve used that particular source. My aim is for consistency and seeing as I sometimes go a few months in between frenzied bouts of research, it’s easy for the information location or detail field of my source citations to be all different in structure.
I’ll post a couple of examples when I get a minute. It may take a couple of days as we’re selling our house at the moment so researching has gone to the back burner.
S

S – Good luck on the house selling!
You also peaked my interest when you mentioned Paperless book. I have it, but have not read it yet, but this will motivate me. Thanks again. I look forward to your templates when you have time.
Marscha

[Sue]

Hi Marscha,
I can’t find any way to post screen shots of the templates on here!! I looked through the forum and couldn’t find where someone had done it either. Sorry.
an example for how one may look is:

TYPE: Census
SOURCE NO: 4
TEXT EXPANDER: ;ecd
FILE NAMING: I record how I want these files named on my computer re Paperless by David Sparks, helps with consistency
DESCRIPTIVE TITLE: 1901 England Census, Population Schedule
ORIGINATOR: Ancestry.com
PUBLICATION FACTS: Ancestry.com Operations Inc citing Census Returns of England & Wales, 1901, National Archives UK, Kew, Surrey, England
INFORMATION LOCATION: place, city, county, ED#, class, piece, folio, page, schedule, line, head of household, date accessed
NOTES: for anything else about the source I want to record

Basically it’s to help me remember how I filled out the source and filed the document, if I ever need to do it again and lets face it, Family Research is repetitive. I could duplicate the source and change the relevant details in some instances but that won’t help me remember how I filled the Information Location/Detail field in. I wanted consistency in reports etc without having to go back through my sources all the time. I work with Bento open on another screen, it works for me.
Sue 😀

[Diane]

@RWells said:

Liz

I did not include the name in the descriptive title because that means that I would have to have a unique source for each birth certificate. So if I had 100 birth certificates then I would have 100 sources. The way I decided to do it is that I would have only one birth certificate source but with 100 different citations. I also decided that the source would only tell me where I got the item and not contain what I found. The citation would tell me where in the source I found that exact certificate within the collection.

This is just the way I do it. That dose not make it the correct way. You just need to decide how you want to do it and stick with it. Your way is just as good as mine only we differ but in my opinion as long as you stick with the way you are doing it you will be just fine.

I keep waiting for Ben to come out with the RM5 template to see how mine looks compared to his.

Roger

I’m new to Reunion/quoting sources/Practical Citation so some of the things discussed I have no idea what people are referring to.

Where do you write the citations for each source?

[Ben]

@Diane said:

I’m new to Reunion/quoting sources/Practical Citation so some of the things discussed I have no idea what people are referring to.

Where do you write the citations for each source?

The only place to store citation information in Reunion 10 is in the Detail field.

[Diane]

@Ben said:

@Diane said:

I’m new to Reunion/quoting sources/Practical Citation so some of the things discussed I have no idea what people are referring to.

Where do you write the citations for each source?

The only place to store citation information in Reunion 10 is in the Detail field.

So for a census source, for instance, what is the citation info we are recording? I am a bit confused with terminology still.

[Judy Tuccinardi]

Oh, I am liking this discussion very much! It is very relevant to where I am at with sources. I am still learning and haven’t gotten a system down pat yet but this discussion is giving me hope and inspiration.

I don’t have Bento (no longer available) but I do have Typeinator which is like Text Expander and type4me. I really like the idea of setting up a template that I just have to fill in the blanks. That is one of my goals-to be consistent with my sourcing. I started my family history long, long, long ago before the Internet so therefore I have lots of paper. And my sources are a mess!

I am wondering how you all handle emails with information…. Do you have a ‘template’ for that kind of source? I am thinking that I wouldn’t save the email, just the information within it. So how does one do that using a ‘template’ and Reunion 10?

Well, this is another discussion that I am going to clip and store in my Evernote.

[Author]

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