Thank you so much for explaining this so thoroughly. I am moving from using The Master Genealogist to Family Historian and source reference is very important to me. This video is excellent at explaining the pros and cons of the different methods and I greatly appreciate the time you put into making this.
I'm glad you found it useful! If you've not seen it yet do watch the Introduction to Ancestral Sources video. If you're moving to Family Historian then using AS with it is recommended Also do use the Fhug website as there is a very active and helpful Family Historian community there.
Wonderful video. As I'm just moving to Family Historian, I've been staring at the screen for several days not sure where to start or how to proceed. This introduction to sources and citations in Family Historian has me about ready to dip my toe into structuring my pre-existing data in FH.
Thanks for putting together this presentation. It was clear and easy to follow. As a fairly new FH user I had been putting off loading 1921 Census details to my imported tree. This morning I added several using AS and it turned out to be so easy!
I think this is a good summary of Splitting and Lumping and Templated and Generic sources which many people new to Family History get confused about. I have a TMG experinece so I have been using templated sources and a splitter. Introduction of templated sources into FH7 and support of Ancestral Sources (I love the AUtoTxt in Ancestral Sources) will bring in many of the TMG users.
Thanks Alan for the kind words. I've been wanting to make this video for a while - I started it back in November (as you may be able to spot from the Windows date towards the beginning) and only got round to finishing it over the weekend. It has ended up being a lengthy video, but hopefully it will help as you've said.
I thought I posted a comment but guess I never submitted. This was very helpful as I will be working on Sources and citations. This video was helpful in better understanding of lumping vs splitting -- something I will have to watch a 2nd time to fully understand if use all splitting or some lumping. I have 50000 facts/event/attributes and 10K images without sources and citations so that is next big projects. This video had good timing and thank you for doing as I am sure it will be helpful to others besides me
Thanks for the very informative video. I have slowly come to realise I am a lumper at heart. Perhaps it is from my years working with database technology. When I first started using FH I made two decisions that I have come to regret. First I decided to jump in feet first to the world of splitting and I spent a lot of time redoing my sources with the help of Ancestral Sources. Second I jumped whole heartedly on the Templates bandwagon. I really felt forced to go the splitter route for several of the reasons you mentioned even though it irked me (and still does). I came from a genealogy tool which handled that issue in a much more elegant manner despite all of its other shortcomings. That is the only thing which keeps me looking wistfully over my shoulder at that other tool. The templates decision was purely voluntary on my part and I have come to regret it because templated sources do not export as is to other programs. I export regularly to a TNG website and have had to make adjustments to deal with source and citations coming from FH templates Nothing big, but I am left with less flexibility on the TNG side. I do have one question for you about the use of Shared Note Records (in Method 2 ) for source text to eliminate duplication at the citation level. I was hoping you would mention it in your video since I see it is an option in Ancestral Sources. Do you have any comments, warning, pitfalls on its effectiveness?
Hi Harold. I started recording my family tree in Family Tree Maker 30 years ago and was definitely a lumper, but really at that stage my sourcing wasn't brilliant - information wasn't on the Internet and I travelled to record offices and wrote it all down and didn't always have the patience to then transcribe this. I did actually write a program 30 years ago to record census data but it stored it in an Access database separate to FTM and therefore wasn't really a good solution. I moved to Family Historian (nearly 20 years ago) attracted by the possibilities of an open text-based file system for which I could develop my own software to manipulate. I came to the conclusion that lumping transcribed sources in GEDCOM required duplication and therefore splitting was the way forward. One of my professional roles is as a database designer and because of that I couldn't bring myself to have data duplication. I don't see splitting as being in anyway something that would appeal to a database person - it could only be appealing if a citation could be shared but that isn't possible in the GEDCOM/FH file system. So from a database viewpoint, for a splitter, one Fact can link to many Sources and a Source can link to many Facts so the citation just becomes a linking table between them to avoid the many-to-many relationship. You are absolutely correct that the duplication of source text for lumpers can be avoided if you link a shared note to the citations but I was really trying to give a clear guide to the differences between lumping and splitting, without getting into the more technical alternatives. But as you’ve asked… If you use shared notes you have the problem of identifying the shared note (there are no fields to hold data such as titles or reference IDs). That note then needs to be attached to each citation. Multimedia can’t be linked to a note so you still end up with lots of duplicated citations with links to the same media and to the same shared note. Also you still have the problem that I highlighted as to how you find and identify the citations for a particular household as citations are not listed in FH in a tab on the records window like sources are. However, I do agree that if you are using the lumper method and have used shared notes then you’ve done a better job at mitigating some of the problems and it probably isn’t worth switching to splitting. But in my opinion for someone starting out (or starting again) with their sourcing with FH who wants to transcribe sources and link to images, splitting is the way to do it: You don’t get the extra layer of complication with having shared notes, you avoid the duplication in citations, you can find the sources more easily and you can use the templates built into FH without having to devise your own lumper templates. All the best Nick
It does feel like both FH & AS are bit of anti-lump. I am new to AS/FH (about 2 months) but for census for example -- I believe it more desirable to lump by "decade" so I can see all the 1900 US Census for example
Hi Kevin. I'm definitely in the camp of recommending splitting when you want to transcribe an entry and as that is one of the strengths of AS, it is natural to push in that direction. FH and AS both lean toward that method because the file structure is based on Gedcom which doesn't support shared citations. Having said that I have spent a huge amount of time over the last 18 years building in support for lumping. The version of AS currently being tested on the Fhug site supports using templated sources with lumped sources. So I do very much believe that people should be able to use whatever method they wish.
@Ancestral Sources thanks That makes sense I suppose. Not sure if that will change with ver7 of GEDCOM and beyond. FH GEDCOM appears to work with tng so that would be my main concern
Thank you for your videos. I am a new user of Family Historian and Ancestral Sources. I am from Australia with Australian and England Sources. How should I handle my Australian Sources in Ancestral Sources? I had no trouble with entering my England Census records but when I went to enter Australian records there are no Regions loaded to cover other countries and states. Am I missing something? Help, please. Lyn
Hi Lyn. Other census countries/regions and years can be created with the Census Template Editor in AS. There are some additional census templates that users have created that can be imported into AS that have been shared on the FHUG knowledge base site (fhug.org.uk/kb/download-type/ancestral-sources/) although there aren't any for Australia. I'd be surprised if someone hasn't created some templates for Australia. Why don't you ask the question "Has anyone created any Ancestral Sources Australian census templates that you would be willing to share?". If no one responds you could have a go at doing this yourself. It's not too difficult once you understand how it works - see the help page on the Census Template screen. Best wishes Nick
Being a lumper, having to edit ever citation to make a change really turns me off. In other software the citation is only created once and shared to each event. Only one citation is created and only one needs editing. I understand this is due to the way FH7 stores data. Sharing an event with a citation is a work around as long as it's the same event, other events that use this citation will have a seperate citation that must be edited individually.
Yes this is the way the GEDCOM structure, that FH's data structure is based on, is organised. Every citation is a duplicate. I don't particularly see this as a problem though because I don't see anything wrong with splitting. Even a lumper is usually a splitter in some ways. For example is your Source called 'Parish records'. Probably not. Maybe you have a source called 'Parish registers of St John's Church, Someplace' so you've made a decision to split at that level. Or perhaps you split at a slightly lower level and have a source called 'Baptisms at St John's Church, Someplace'. So really you have made a decision at what level you're going to split. So all that a 'splitter' is doing is splitting at a lower level (e.g. an individual baptism).
Thank you so much for explaining this so thoroughly. I am moving from using The Master Genealogist to Family Historian and source reference is very important to me. This video is excellent at explaining the pros and cons of the different methods and I greatly appreciate the time you put into making this.
I'm glad you found it useful! If you've not seen it yet do watch the Introduction to Ancestral Sources video. If you're moving to Family Historian then using AS with it is recommended Also do use the Fhug website as there is a very active and helpful Family Historian community there.
Wonderful video. As I'm just moving to Family Historian, I've been staring at the screen for several days not sure where to start or how to proceed. This introduction to sources and citations in Family Historian has me about ready to dip my toe into structuring my pre-existing data in FH.
Thanks for putting together this presentation. It was clear and easy to follow. As a fairly new FH user I had been putting off loading 1921 Census details to my imported tree. This morning I added several using AS and it turned out to be so easy!
Thanks for the positive review! It's great to hear you're getting to grips with AS :)
I think this is a good summary of Splitting and Lumping and Templated and Generic sources which many people new to Family History get confused about. I have a TMG experinece so I have been using templated sources and a splitter. Introduction of templated sources into FH7 and support of Ancestral Sources (I love the AUtoTxt in Ancestral Sources) will bring in many of the TMG users.
Thanks Alan for the kind words. I've been wanting to make this video for a while - I started it back in November (as you may be able to spot from the Windows date towards the beginning) and only got round to finishing it over the weekend. It has ended up being a lengthy video, but hopefully it will help as you've said.
I thought I posted a comment but guess I never submitted. This was very helpful as I will be working on Sources and citations. This video was helpful in better understanding of lumping vs splitting -- something I will have to watch a 2nd time to fully understand if use all splitting or some lumping. I have 50000 facts/event/attributes and 10K images without sources and citations so that is next big projects. This video had good timing and thank you for doing as I am sure it will be helpful to others besides me
Great summary...thanks! I will definitely share it with others 😊
Thanks for the very informative video. I have slowly come to realise I am a lumper at heart. Perhaps it is from my years working with database technology. When I first started using FH I made two decisions that I have come to regret. First I decided to jump in feet first to the world of splitting and I spent a lot of time redoing my sources with the help of Ancestral Sources. Second I jumped whole heartedly on the Templates bandwagon. I really felt forced to go the splitter route for several of the reasons you mentioned even though it irked me (and still does). I came from a genealogy tool which handled that issue in a much more elegant manner despite all of its other shortcomings. That is the only thing which keeps me looking wistfully over my shoulder at that other tool.
The templates decision was purely voluntary on my part and I have come to regret it because templated sources do not export as is to other programs. I export regularly to a TNG website and have had to make adjustments to deal with source and citations coming from FH templates Nothing big, but I am left with less flexibility on the TNG side.
I do have one question for you about the use of Shared Note Records (in Method 2 ) for source text to eliminate duplication at the citation level. I was hoping you would mention it in your video since I see it is an option in Ancestral Sources. Do you have any comments, warning, pitfalls on its effectiveness?
Hi Harold. I started recording my family tree in Family Tree Maker 30 years ago and was definitely a lumper, but really at that stage my sourcing wasn't brilliant - information wasn't on the Internet and I travelled to record offices and wrote it all down and didn't always have the patience to then transcribe this. I did actually write a program 30 years ago to record census data but it stored it in an Access database separate to FTM and therefore wasn't really a good solution. I moved to Family Historian (nearly 20 years ago) attracted by the possibilities of an open text-based file system for which I could develop my own software to manipulate. I came to the conclusion that lumping transcribed sources in GEDCOM required duplication and therefore splitting was the way forward. One of my professional roles is as a database designer and because of that I couldn't bring myself to have data duplication. I don't see splitting as being in anyway something that would appeal to a database person - it could only be appealing if a citation could be shared but that isn't possible in the GEDCOM/FH file system. So from a database viewpoint, for a splitter, one Fact can link to many Sources and a Source can link to many Facts so the citation just becomes a linking table between them to avoid the many-to-many relationship.
You are absolutely correct that the duplication of source text for lumpers can be avoided if you link a shared note to the citations but I was really trying to give a clear guide to the differences between lumping and splitting, without getting into the more technical alternatives. But as you’ve asked… If you use shared notes you have the problem of identifying the shared note (there are no fields to hold data such as titles or reference IDs). That note then needs to be attached to each citation. Multimedia can’t be linked to a note so you still end up with lots of duplicated citations with links to the same media and to the same shared note. Also you still have the problem that I highlighted as to how you find and identify the citations for a particular household as citations are not listed in FH in a tab on the records window like sources are. However, I do agree that if you are using the lumper method and have used shared notes then you’ve done a better job at mitigating some of the problems and it probably isn’t worth switching to splitting. But in my opinion for someone starting out (or starting again) with their sourcing with FH who wants to transcribe sources and link to images, splitting is the way to do it: You don’t get the extra layer of complication with having shared notes, you avoid the duplication in citations, you can find the sources more easily and you can use the templates built into FH without having to devise your own lumper templates.
All the best
Nick
It does feel like both FH & AS are bit of anti-lump. I am new to AS/FH (about 2 months) but for census for example -- I believe it more desirable to lump by "decade" so I can see all the 1900 US Census for example
Hi Kevin. I'm definitely in the camp of recommending splitting when you want to transcribe an entry and as that is one of the strengths of AS, it is natural to push in that direction. FH and AS both lean toward that method because the file structure is based on Gedcom which doesn't support shared citations. Having said that I have spent a huge amount of time over the last 18 years building in support for lumping. The version of AS currently being tested on the Fhug site supports using templated sources with lumped sources. So I do very much believe that people should be able to use whatever method they wish.
@Ancestral Sources thanks
That makes sense I suppose. Not sure if that will change with ver7 of GEDCOM and beyond. FH GEDCOM appears to work with tng so that would be my main concern
Thank you for your videos. I am a new user of Family Historian and Ancestral Sources. I am from Australia with Australian and England Sources. How should I handle my Australian Sources in Ancestral Sources? I had no trouble with entering my England Census records but when I went to enter Australian records there are no Regions loaded to cover other countries and states. Am I missing something? Help, please. Lyn
Hi Lyn. Other census countries/regions and years can be created with the Census Template Editor in AS. There are some additional census templates that users have created that can be imported into AS that have been shared on the FHUG knowledge base site (fhug.org.uk/kb/download-type/ancestral-sources/) although there aren't any for Australia. I'd be surprised if someone hasn't created some templates for Australia. Why don't you ask the question "Has anyone created any Ancestral Sources Australian census templates that you would be willing to share?". If no one responds you could have a go at doing this yourself. It's not too difficult once you understand how it works - see the help page on the Census Template screen. Best wishes Nick
@@ancestralsources Thank you for your information. 💞
Being a lumper, having to edit ever citation to make a change really turns me off. In other software the citation is only created once and shared to each event. Only one citation is created and only one needs editing. I understand this is due to the way FH7 stores data. Sharing an event with a citation is a work around as long as it's the same event, other events that use this citation will have a seperate citation that must be edited individually.
Yes this is the way the GEDCOM structure, that FH's data structure is based on, is organised. Every citation is a duplicate. I don't particularly see this as a problem though because I don't see anything wrong with splitting. Even a lumper is usually a splitter in some ways. For example is your Source called 'Parish records'. Probably not. Maybe you have a source called 'Parish registers of St John's Church, Someplace' so you've made a decision to split at that level. Or perhaps you split at a slightly lower level and have a source called 'Baptisms at St John's Church, Someplace'. So really you have made a decision at what level you're going to split. So all that a 'splitter' is doing is splitting at a lower level (e.g. an individual baptism).