Source-Driven Data Entry

Introduction to Source-Driven Data Entry

Why Source-Driven Data Entry?

When you learn how to use Family Historian, you are likely to start by learning how to perform standard tasks like adding a person, adding relatives of that person, adding facts about these people, adding pictures of people and events, and hopefully also learning how to add source citations.  And that's fine.  But those person-directed tasks don't map very elegantly onto what genealogists actually spend most of their time doing - which is all about inputting information that comes from a source of some kind, that they have somehow acquired by whatever means (often from the Internet these days, but not necessarily).

Let's take an example.  Suppose you download an image of a census record that has some interesting stuff in it.  Here are some of the things you might want to do with it:

1. Create new records for family members (and maybe others too) that you don't already have records for, and record their relationships
2. Record facts about those people that you have gleaned from the census record
3. Create a Source record to represent the census entry and record all the details about where the census entry came from (maybe both online, and originally).
4. Maybe attach the image of the census record to that Source record.
5. Maybe record a transcription of the census entry (in a Text from Source field), so that it can be searched-for, using search tools, and browsed, and so that you have documented your interpretation of the (potentially hard-to-read) handwriting in the census.  Maybe you even want to take advantage of Family Historian's ability to embed links into notes, to add links to the records for the people mentioned in the transcript.  That will make it easier later to move around your own project data later when you come back and browse the transcripts, and remove possible ambiguities of reference (your interpretation of who these people are).
6. Link all the facts you added in step 2, to your new source record, and maybe even link previously existing facts to the new Source record too (because it confirms them), and add appropriate details to the links themselves, as needed (we call these links source citations, because it is these links that will be used by Family Historian to ensure that sources get cited appropriately in reports and books).

And that's just one source.

Now of course you may have no wish to do all of that.  Maybe you have no wish to do most of that.  But if you've done a good job of learning how to use Family Historian, you should be in a position to do all of it, if you want to - but probably not that quickly and not that easily.  Doing it all involves moving around between different parts of the program. It's easy to miss things.  There are decisions to be made along the way and it's hard to always be consistent (consistency of approach is a good thing in any kind of research).  So for those who want to do this kind of stuff, what is needed is...

A New Workflow

This is the new workflow (new in version 7), facilitated by new tools to make it all possible:

• You get a new source (acquire a new document say).
• You open Family Historian and click the Source button .  You choose one of the first 3 options on the menu (more on these later).  If it's one of the first two, a new Source record is created.  Either way, the Citation Window opens.
• You fill in a few details in the Citation Window.  If you're using the "Source from Template" option, hopefully the fields will closely match the information in the source in front of you, so there will be little need for decisions to be made about how to record the data (no more debates about what to put in the 'Author' field when your source is a census, say; which is the kind of thing you have to think about if you use generic sources).
• You now have 3 options (all buttons at the bottom of the Citation Window at this point):
• Ideally you click on the Data Entry Assistant button and a Data Entry Assistant tool (more on these later) is launched which does most of tasks 1-6 above for you, with minimal effort on your part, and producing better and more professional-looking results than you could realistically have hoped to achieve doing it all yourself 'by hand'.
• If there is no Data Entry Assistant for the particular source you have, you're going to have to do more of the work yourself.  But it's still not that hard.  Because the chances are that most of the information you're going to want to input from the source, should all get the same source citation.  You can set up all the details and click the Enable Automatic button.  That enables automatic source citations.  You can now quickly add all the people and facts, and source citations will be automatically added, saving a lot of fiddling about.  If you need to tweak details of particular source citations, that's no problem.  Don't forget to disable automatic source citations when you've finished working on your source.  But you're not likely to forget because the automatic source citation pane will be visible at the top of the screen, with a big 'Enabled' button, when automatic source citations are enabled.
• The third option can be combined as-needed with the second (or with the first, for that matter).  Suppose your source tells you some things that you already knew and have already recorded.  You may not have any new facts to add, but you may still want to add a source citation for the facts you have already recorded, because the source is additional confirmation that those facts are correct.  So you click Copy Citation.  This copies the source citation to the source clipboard.  Now select each of the facts that it applies to, in turn, in the Property Box and click the Paste Citation button on the Citation List pane toolbar.  That will add the source citation to those facts. Of course you could use this approach with new facts too, if you wanted to.

You may still have a few other tasks that have not been done.  For example, you might want to add an image for the source (4. in the list above).  But that's easy too.  Just drag-and-drop the image onto the media tab of the Citation Window.  There's even a Data Entry Assistant that will help with naming of source media files, to keep them all consistent.

In summary, the new workflow, and the new tools, are designed to do the following...

• Keep data entry to a minimum, and reduce or eliminate duplication of effort (entering the same information in more than one place).
• Automate everything that can be automated so you don't spend time doing mundane tasks that can be done for you.
• Make it as easy as possible to do these things while producing high quality, consistent and professional-looking results - better results than realistically you would be likely to achieve if you did it all 'by hand'.
• Try to ensure that the tasks you have to complete within the software relate closely to the 'real-world' documents in front of you, so that the process of data entry feels as natural and intuitive as possible.

To learn more, see Source-Driven Data Entry and Sources and Source Templates.