Thanks for the detailed explanation Nick. I have never use citations so was beginning to wonder if I should. From what you have said I will continue to stick to sources. Victor On 28/02/2012 12:58 PM, Nick Walker wrote: > On Tue, Feb 28, 2012 at 12:25 PM, Alan E. White< > family.historian@aewhite.me.uk> wrote: > >> To me, having each page of a census as a source is the same as having each >> page of a book as a source: I'd find that unwieldy. Surely a book is a >> single source and pages cited from it are citations? >> >> Alan >> > I don't think there can be such a clear distinction. A birth certificate is > just a copy of part of a page in a register book. A census household is > equally just a copy of part of a page of a census book. So if you look at > it like that there is very little difference between them. It is all down > to personal preference as to how you view it. > > Ignoring the technical issues it really doesn't matter whether you consider > a certificate to be a source or a citation, that is the decision of the > user. Both methods are equally valid. However, sadly there are some > technical reasons why it is sensible to put your data in the sources rather > than in the citations (method 1). I transcribe every census household and > this data is then recorded once in the Family Historian GEDCOM file using a > source record. I link an image to this source. I then link a citation to > each event referred to in the census (Census event, occupation, births, > etc.). A typical census household of 6 people might therefore have 1 > source, 1 image and perhaps10 citations. > > If instead I use 'method 2' then I'd need a copy of this transcription in > each of these 10 citations, I'd link the image to each of these 10 > citations. Therefore there is going to be a lot more duplicated data in the > file. If I need to edit the transcription (perhaps I made a typing error), > I need to edit it in 10 places. Data duplication is never a good thing. > Also citations are much more hidden away in Family Historian: it is very > straightforward to get a list of all the sources to find the one I want but > there isn't such a convenient method to see my list of citations. Some of > the issues with method 2 duplicated data can be mitigated by using a single > shared note linked to each citation but they are still not so easily > accessible as sources which can have titles, etc. > > I do use 'method 2' if, for example, I'm just recording a source of 'GRO > Indexes' as this only leads to one citation (a birth, death, or marriage) > without any screenshots or transcriptions. But as soon as I get a > certificate then this becomes a 'method 1' source with all the various > occupations, residence, etc. events linked to it via citations. > > Nick > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to FAMILY-HISTORIAN-USERS-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message