As the Hancock List gedcoms have mistakes that even those who have submitted them feel, I think this may show it is better to have them posted with their 'warts' than to not have anything. They are much like Ancestral File or the pedigree Resource Files which you are to use with a grain of salt as a 'map' to help you search for your ancestor and are not listed as being perfect. If anyone who is "perfect" in their research disagrees with these tools being used, don't use them and ignore them. Helene ==================================================================== "THE PUSH BUTTON APPROACH," by Michael John Neill ==================================================================== FOREWARNED I write this article at my own peril. Some readers may become convinced that I am an anti-technology Luddite who carves these articles in stone by the light of a fire. I do not, nor do I haul the articles to the editor in a donkey-driven cart. Be warned: this column is filled with opinion. E-mail comments are welcome, but I usually cannot respond to every note I receive. I also descend from a long line of stubborn individuals (for which I have stacks of documentation) and while it occasionally happens, I am not likely to change my mind easily. PAINTING BY NUMBERS? Many artists are not fans of paintings "created" by the "paint by number" approach. Some would say these paintings lack a certain quality, lack a certain air of originality. Great art, some maintain, cannot simply be created by filling in spaces someone else has drawn. The artist themselves must create and fill the space as they see fit. LACKING DOCUMENTATION? Those who criticize current online GEDCOM files as lacking in documentation should look at the files submitted to these group sheet exchanges. Many sheets I received during this era only had a submitter name and an address with absolutely no sources or citations. If I could contact the submitter, I may or may not be able to find where they got their information. If I could not contact the submitter I was out of luck. Remember that this took place before the Internet. The Internet is not to blame for a lack of citation and documentation. Many have been fighting the "documentation" war for years. And it does not look like the battle will end in the near future. Technology may have changed the battle landscape, but technology did not create the war. NEAT CHARTS AND FORMS Your software may do a reasonable job of creating some reports and forms. But is your software equally adept at generating a "story" from your facts and figures? Or is it simply filling in the blanks? Can software do justice to the uniqueness of your story and your family? I'm not convinced that it can. Can the history of a family be created by entering names, dates, and places into a database and clicking on "create book?" I don't think so. Many who have created family histories have spent decades of their lives in the process. In some cases, they've spent longer creating their book than they did raising their children. And they created that book the same way they raised their child: one day at a time. I tend to agree with Elizabeth Shown Mills who commented in the June 2001 National Genealogical Society Quarterly's Editor's Page that: "An awesome family history is written the same way---by the byte, note the database---one character at a time." DO "CLICK AND CREATE" BOOKS HAVE ANY PURPOSE? They do, especially if citations and sources are included. These books are one way of preserving information for future generations and preserving information is better than not preserving it at all. But bear in mind that preserving information with absolutely no sources or citations may be problematic for future researchers who use that information. And remember that "fill in the form" histories may not serve your purpose and to tend to "standardize" family history and this kind of standardization tends to make all families look homogeneous. I do know of several families that have published books consisting only of names and dates, no places. One can also use the auto-generated text as a skeleton for a book so that the drudgery of typing names and dates and places has been eliminated. But a skeleton does not a complete human nor a complete book make. And the data should be analyzed before, during, and after it has been entered into the database. Use of a genealogy database should not be only for mindless data entry. WHICH BRINGS ME TO THE CALCULATOR The longer I teach math (my real job for those who are wondering), the less enamored I am with the calculator. It serves a definite purpose in the classroom and is indispensable in certain coursework. If not used appropriately, students are left pushing buttons and end up having little real understanding or conceptual knowledge. I have encountered far too many students in my career who could "push the right buttons" but had little understanding of underlying principles. Occasionally the problem is how the calculator was used in previous coursework, but not always. The calculator may give me answers without my having to do any work. Software can easily show relationships but it is up to the user, not the computer, to validate those relationships. Pushing buttons does not equate with understanding. Merging GEDCOM files does not equate to solid research. Have I done any analysis before I merged? Have I really thought about the individuals I am "combining" into one persona? If I have thought and if I have analyzed, then merging may be appropriate. DO THE MERGING FOR ME? My program might even give me ideas of potential matches without my even having to think for myself. This option was created to minimize data entry error and to make the merging of data files easier. However, I prefer to do my thinking for myself and find that an alphabetical list of individuals in my files usually serves the same purpose. Personally, I descend from many German families that "reused" the names of children who died young and software programs always want to "merge" all these children with the same name into one person. Merging is great, but I should think before I do it. WHO'S ON FIRST, WHO'S ON SECOND, AND WHO'S DOING THE THINKING? Your genealogical software package is not designed to think for you. It is designed to manage information for you and remember all the dates, places, locations, and citations that you cannot. The thinking is supposed to be done by the user. And frankly, one of the reasons I like genealogy so much is that it does require me to think. ___________________________________________________________________ Michael John Neill, is the Course I Coordinator at the Genealogical Institute of Mid America (GIMA) held annually in Springfield, Illinois, and is also on the faculty of Carl Sandburg College in Galesburg, Illinois. Michael is the Web columnist for the FGS FORUM and is on the editorial board of the Illinois State Genealogical Society Quarterly. He conducts seminars and lectures on a wide variety of genealogical and computer topics and contributes to several genealogical publications, including Ancestry and "Genealogical Computing." You can e-mail him at: mailto:mneill@asc.csc.cc.il.us or visit his Web site at: http://www.rootdig.com/ Copyright 2001, MyFamily.com. 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