Hi Corinne and Forum members, At 20:34 20/01/2015, Corinne Curtis wrote: >... I am quite happy about the idea of using the structured BMD archive >format for British records, and it looks like the "user defined" >structure can be used for non-british BMD as well as other record >sets. What I am most interested in is whether anyone has set up an >online database of individuals that somehow identifies whether you >have placed them in a reconstructed tree, and if so, who their parents >and/or their earliest known ancestor is? I'm guessing I could do this >in a user-defined database that started a bit like an international >birth record (year of birth, place, parents names) with an added >column for earliest known ancestor, and maybe for place of origin of >earliest known ancestor, and possibly even for my database ref number >(the RIN from legacy)... I did set up a number of online databases in the Guild Online Archive but found the procedure for updating them quite involved and time-consuming. So I reverted to making the spreadsheets in which I was already storing the data available as downloads from my own Cree One-Name Study website at http://www.cree.name. Go to the Lists Section of the site and you will find 23 spreadsheets covering BMDs, immigration and shipping records and newspaper death notices for various countries around the world. I use OpenOffice as my spreadsheet software as it's free and open-source, but save and upload these files as .xls files as that's what most people can use. Each spreadsheet has a green column that does what you have asked about. If the person that line refers to has been entered into the Genelaogy Database then they have a CreeID number and that appears in the green column. (The Cree ID number is the ID number allocated in The Master Genealogist which is my offline genealogy database.) You can do the same in the Guild Online Archive using user-defined databases if you wish but you'll still need to keep spreadsheets on your own computer as backup and to store the data pending updating the GOA. The green column gives a useful and immediate indication of how your family reconstruction is going. I'm particularly pleased with the high rate of reconstruction of Australian dn NZ Cree families - and almost all have been linked with lines in the UK or Ireland. The website has several "Quicksearch" boxes where a CreeID from a spreadsheet can be entered, thence leading to the relevant person details in the Cree Online Genealogy Database. See my article in the current Joiurnal for more details. Best Wishes, Mike Spathaky Cree One-Name Study http://cree.one-name.net