On Monday, May 23, 2011 12:18:57 PM UTC-4, steve wrote: > On May 23, 6:52 am, Tom Wetmore <[email protected]> wrote: > > How should we store evidence in genealogical databases? > > Tom > Can't you simply catalog every piece of information number such and > such? The copy of the marriage certificate from Aunt Mary is #123456 > and the email from cousin Leroy is #123457 and the transcription of > Hidden Valley marriages is #123458. > > An individual record can then refer to the various item numbers that > support its conclusions. I don't see that the item has to point back > to the people. Presumably the item would speak for itself. > > What a genealogy program can or should do depends on what the user is > doing. A program that is great for presenting a family tree may not > be suitable for doing a one name study. How do you record that the > John SMITH who enlisted in the 1st Regiment of Alabama Infantry just > might be the same John SMITH who married Mary JONES over in the > neighboring county; but you're not sure. > > Right now I'm sorta trying to do a locality study. I'm completely > clueless as to how I should organize things. I wind up just making > lots of transcriptions and notes and saving them as text files. > Surely there is a better way. > > Steve > Steve, Your approach is great for person-based genealogy. You collect your evidence, you catalog it, and you reference each item of evidence from the person records in your database that the evidence refers to. My question has to do with what happens when you have reached the point where you need to do record-based genealogy, and you have collected a great deal of evidence about people you are not sure of yet. You can catalog that evidence as you suggest. But you don't have any person records to refer to that evidence yet, so you can't add any of that data to your database yet. So say you have 100 catalogued records. Some are on paper. Some are image files. Maybe you transcribed some of them into word processing files. How do you want to work with that evidence to decide who the real persons were? Imagine -- you have collected 100 items of evidence. You want to compare them in many ways to decide who was you. So you need to search through them looking for a specific name, or a specific year, or a specific place. You don't know who the people are yet, and you are trying to figure that out. If all these records were on paper, or in word processing files or in image files, how are you going to find the data you need quickly. I am convinced that once you reach record-based genealogy, you need to get your evidence records codified into records in a software program. I would like that software program to be the same program I use for genealogy, but today's programs don't seem to support this idea very well. If you had those evidence records codified somehow, you would have an excellent solution to the searching and thinking problem. Your software could instantly retrieve all evidence records containing a certain name, or a certain year, or a certain place. So again my question. Given you are doing record-based genealogy, and you have lots of evidence records about people you are not sure of yet, how do you want to record that evidence so you can effectively use it to make you decisions about who was who? Tom