Genealogists do not just record information about events and dates in people lives. Crucially they also record where this information came from – their sources. They do this so that others who want to use their research, can check their findings if they wish to. Another reason is so that they themselves will be able to re-check their own findings if they later find apparent contradicting evidence. In general, your work as a genealogist is likely to be much more valuable to others, and to yourself, if you have provided good source citations.
So what is an example of a source? A document could be a source (such as a death certificate, say), or a record in a record office. But you could also see your source as being a person (or a particular interview with a person), or a gravestone, or a cemetery, or a newspaper article, or a census record, or a website, or … many other things.
What makes a good source citation? Lengthy books have been written on this subject – such as Evidence Explained, by Elizabeth Shown Mills. Put simply, a good source citation provides enough detail about where the information came from, that others - and perhaps even you yourself in the future if you need to - can use it as a guide to retrace your steps and rediscover the source, and the piece of information that you are citing. For example, if you record that X died in 1978, and your citation says that you read it in a book, this clearly does not provide enough detail. But if you give the name of the book, and other details such as the author, the publisher, the date of publication and the edition, and if you even specify the page on which you found the information – then there is every chance that others will be able to retrace your steps.
Depending on the approach you take to citing sources, you might consider that your source is a very large item (such as an entire census), or a relatively small item (such as a particular household census entry). There is no definitive right answer about this. It is up to you. Whatever you decide to treat as your source will be represented within Family Historian as a Source record. You cite this source by linking items of data to that Source record – and you can do this with as many items of data as you like. If you know what information you want to record for the source citation, the decision about what to treat as your source becomes a decision about where to record the source information within Family Historian. If your sources tend to be large items (like entire censuses), you are likely to need relatively few Source records, and you are likely to have to record more information in the citation-specific details. On the other hand, if your sources tend to be small items (like a specific household entry within a census), you are likely to need more Source records, and you will record more details within the Source record itself, and less in the citation-specific details.
Source citations can be added in the Property Box or in the Note Window. To add a source citation in the Property Box, click on the field you want to add a citation to, and open the Citation List Pane if it’s not already open. It will show a list of existing citations for that piece of information – an empty list if this is your first source citation. Then click the button. A drop-down list appears asking if you want to:
Adding a source citation within the Note window is similar. Position the cursor at the place you want to add a source citation, and click on the button on the toolbar. The same dropdown list appears, with the same choice of options.
When you cite an existing source, you are adding another link to an existing Source record. Ordinarily there will be no need to modify the Source record. You will just need to supply the citation-specific details. When however you are creating a new Source record, you will need to decide if you want to use a generic source or a source from template...
The previous section describes how to add a source citation to a field you have recorded in the Property Box. But a common scenario is that you may receive a document - a copy of a certificate say - and this will be your starting-point for your next series of tasks. Yes you very likely will want to create a Source record for this document; but you will also want to extract all the facts about people that are recorded in the document, and link these back to the Source record via citations. We call this source-driven data entry - because it is data entry that is driven in the first instance, by your receipt of new source information.
Family Historian has a protocol for managing source-driven data entry. The starting-point is to click on the button on the main application toolbar. When you do this a dropdown menu appears. If you're using source templates, click on Create Source from Template / Prepare Citation. If you are using generic source records, click on Create Generic Source Record / Prepare Citation. Either way, you will create a new source record. At the same time, you can create a prepared citation - that is, set up all the details for the citation you will wish to add to any facts that you glean from the source.
See Source-Driven Data Entry to learn more.
Before support for source templates was added, all Source records within Family Historian were generic. When a source is generic this means is that the same set of fields are used to record information about the source, regardless of the source type. The standard fields for a generic source are these:
These are the fields that you will need to use to record information about your source, regardless of what kind of source it is. Some of these fields (like ‘Title’, ‘Type’ and ‘Custom Id’) are indeed applicable to all possible sources. But some are not. The ‘Author’ and ‘Publication Info’ fields may be appropriate if your source is a book, but they are not obviously appropriate if your source is a person or a gravestone, say. Nevertheless, with generic Source records, those are the fields you have and if you want to use a generic Source record, you have to make the best use of them that you can.
As well as generic Source record fields, there are also generic citation-specific fields. These are:
Again, these fields may be appropriate for some source types, but not all.
So what do templated sources (sources created as source from template) look like? What fields do they have? They can have all the fields that are available for generic Source records, although in practice many of these fields are not used for templated sources. But they can also have other fields. Different source templates have different fields – as many as needed in each case. This is because templated sources are designed to have fields which are specific to a particular source type. You have one source template for each source type. So a source template for cemeteries might include fields such as Cemetery Name and Cemetery Address, for example. Citation-specific details are also normally different for templated sources, and again, you can have as many citation-specific fields as are needed, for each source template.
The advantage of templated sources over generic sources, is that the fields are more appropriate for the source type in question. The likelihood is that someone trying to retrace your steps, and find the source of your information, will find it easier to do, and be more likely to be successful, if the information is recorded in appropriate fields. Also, when Family Historian generates footnotes and bibliographies in reports and books, it can produce superior results, and present the information in a more standard and professional-looking way, if you use source templates. This is because the formatting of footnotes and bibliographies is specified for each source template, individually. Also, if you use source templates, you are likely to find in practice that your source citations are more standardised and consistent – which is always a good thing (Family Historian can even automatically generate titles for your templated Source records, which also aids standardisation). Another advantage of source templates is that it is also easier to enter source citation information if you are typing the information into fields which perfectly fit the subject matter, rather than having to adapt fields which don’t. In the latter case, you will have to make decisions about how to use generic fields. But in the former case, if the fields are obviously appropriate, there are no decisions to make - so it's easier. And if it’s easier do something, you are more likely to do it.
If you plan to use source templates, it may be a good idea to plan ahead about how you want to organise your sources and which source templates you may want to use. Family Historian provides two collections of source templates (Essentials and Advanced), and you can use any combination of any of the templates in either of these collections - or import source template collections created by others if you wish. You can also modify existing source templates if there is one that is close to what you want, but not a perfect fit, or create your own.
When deciding which templates to use, you should ask yourself if you want highly detailed ones (such as those in the Advanced collection) or if will you get by with a smaller number of less-detailed ones (such as those in the Essentials collection). If you don't know what to do, you are usually recommended to start by using the Essentials collection, and add more templates on an as-needed basis, if at any point you find that your needs are not being adequately met by the Essentials templates.
One other issue to be aware of is that if you want to transfer your data into another program, the other program may be more likely to be able to make good sense of the source citations if they are recorded as generic sources, than if they are recorded as templated sources. That said, full details of the Source Template records used by each Source record, are recorded within your family tree data files (GEDCOM files); so the information is there for programs that want to make use of it.
As mentioned above, each installation of Family Historian comes with two collections of source template definitions: the Advanced collection and the Essentials collection. Each source template definition is a sort of recipe for a source template. The source template definition specifies all the details of the fields that make up the source template, as well as how they are used within footnotes and bibliographies, and other details. All of these source templates (and any others you create yourself, or import) are available for you to use within your projects. But before you can use a source template within a project, you have to add it to that project. When you add a source template to a project, it is represented within the project by a Source Template record. Remember that source template definitions are not themselves part of your project data.
What happens if you want to add an additional field to a source template, after you have added it to a project? Can you do that? The answer is – yes you can. But you should appreciate that if you change the source template definition, this won’t affect the Source Template record that was created when you previously added the source template to your project. For that matter, changing the Source Template record within your project (which you also can do) will not affect any source template definitions. Consequently, if you want to add additional fields to a source template, you might want to change both the source template definition (if it's a custom one) and any Source Template records you have already created when you added the source template to one or more projects. You cannot change standard (non-custom) source template definitions, but you can make a copy of the source template definition and modify the copy. To make it easier to keep source template definitions consistent with Source Template records, Family Historian provides a tool to help with this. This is the Source Template Definition Compare Dialog, which allows you not just to compare a source template definition with a Source Template record, but also to change one or other, to make them consistent.