[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 😀

[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

[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

[Sue]

Hi Sue
I get your reasoning for wanting the accessed date in the source itself . If you’re making a source say for the 1871 Census and you put the accessed date in there, you would have to make a census source for each individual family otherwise your accessed date wouldn’t be correct. I have one source for the 1871 Census and I cite it for each family within that census so I put my accessed date at the end of the Detail to reflect when I accessed that particular families 1871 Census. Some of mine have been accessed 5 years apart. If you are making a source for each family for the 1871 Census and you want it in the source section and not the detail, you could perhaps put it in the freeform text section but then it wouldn’t be safe during gedcom export, unless you wanted to put it in the Title somehow??
Maybe someone else will have some other ideas
Sue

[Sue]

@mccormack44 said:

Therefore, I have decided to make sure that my address book is up-to-date on this contact information and remove it from the Source. Does this make sense to others, or am I missing a purpose in including the covert address?

Sue

I have some peoples email addresses stored in my sources. I don’t exchange gedcoms as a rule, so I’ve never worried about storing the email addresses in the source. I can’t rule out the possibility that I may want to exchange gedcoms in the future so this raises questions for me as to how to proceed when I redo my sources using the practical citations way which is the correct way for this to be handled???
S

[Sue]

Lightbulb moment!

[Sue]

My occurrence was to do with birth records, Ancestry showed the birth year citing family search for its original data. Later I looked on family search, they showed the complete date of birth and date of baptism. I’d already entered the ancestry source citing family search but I added one for family search as it indicates which information came from where and what sites I’ve searched.
S

[Sue]

I’ve been making two different sources, one for each site. I’ll be interested to see what others do too.
S

[Sue]

I too have downloaded Kathy’s system, although I’ll have to modify some fields as I’m in Australia with UK heritage
Bento is an excellent program. If you have an iPad and use it for research you may want to check out Bento for iPad. It syncs all your libraries, over wifi, to your iPad so you can make changes on the run and sync them back when you’re done. 😎

[Sue]

Ditto to what Marc said 😀

[Sue]

Hi Guys,
I really wanted to be able to sort by type so I maintained my “Types” by making a Practical Citation in each type e.g. PC Census, PC Vital Record. ( I abbreviated as it was too long otherwise) It means a lot of extra “Types” but keeps the ability to sort. The optional field is something I’d probably use.

[Author]

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