Adding Sources As Evidences?

[cdhorn]

Dallan,

I want to provide some feedback about adding and managing sources as it seems a little inconsistent.

If I go to Content Lists, Sources, and add a source I am presented with a large number of fields I can enter about the source as well as attach the source media.

Now, if I go to add an event or fact for a person on the Details panel I can add media and on the Source panel I can type in the name of the source I added and reference it.

When I do this it is unclear to me what the relationship is supposed to be between the media item for the event / fact on the previous panel and the media item associated with the source.

Now, instead of selecting the source previously entered say I want to create a new source as it would be nice to do everything in one shot and that seemed to be the design goal. I can do so by entering the title and citation information, but it does not make sense to me that all the other fields associated with creating a source are not available here and that the attachment of the source media is not here either but on the previous panel.

Or so I thought. I’m further confused because then after I save everything if I go to edit the real source record that was created to add some of the additional information I could not when creating it the media is not associated with it as I expected.

Sort of related to this, there is a bug as when editing the real source record I noticed if I select the type at the bottom, say original, and save it and then pull it up in edit mode again the selection is gone.

I think another possible bug is in the publication section in the source display. If in person view when I select the evidence item and then select (source) it opens the source panel and for the one source where I entered the certificate information in the Page / volume / film # field it displays as follows:
Page / volume / film #: Certificate #1459
Not sure if that lead in portion should be there or not, seems to look out of place to me.

Thanks,
Chris

[DallanQ]

When I do this it is unclear to me what the relationship is supposed to be between the media item for the event / fact on the previous panel and the media item associated with the source.

Sources in RootsFinder correspond to “master sources” in other genealogy programs. Evidences in RootsFinder correspond to “source citations” in other genealogy programs. You can attach media to sources or evidences. The media that is displayed is the media attached to the evidence if there is one, falling back to the media attached to the source if there isn’t a media attached to the evidence.

Or so I thought. I’m further confused because then after I save everything if I go to edit the real source record that was created to add some of the additional information I could not when creating it the media is not associated with it as I expected.

Can you explain more about that you mean here?

Sort of related to this, there is a bug as when editing the real source record I noticed if I select the type at the bottom, say original, and save it and then pull it up in edit mode again the selection is gone.

That’s definitely a bug. I’ll look into it.

I think another possible bug is in the publication section in the source display. If in person view when I select the evidence item and then select (source) it opens the source panel and for the one source where I entered the certificate information in the Page / volume / film # field it displays as follows:
Page / volume / film #: Certificate #1459
Not sure if that lead in portion should be there or not, seems to look out of place to me.

Also looks like a bug. I’ll look into this as well.

[cdhorn]

Dallan,

Thanks, yes that is a better way to think of it. The master source would be a census and evidences different pages from the census applicable to different people. I started off with certificates and got stuck on what I wanted to do and didn’t think of it that way till much later after I wrote this.

Having started off by adding evidences for birth, marriage, and death events and having the source tab available in the process I assumed I was creating the master source record for them at the same time, and it does create one but more of a shell so to speak. The media was associated with the evidence item, not the master source record as I wanted, and there are fields in the master source record I could not enter when adding it as part of creating the evidence. It seemed intuitive to me that I should be able to do all of that at the same time instead of in two separate steps. And so then when I went to update the master source afterwards the media item was missing. As I can not select an existing media item to link to it I would have to upload it again and would possibly end up with duplicate media records.

I’ve since gone back and removed everything and started over, creating the source record for each certificate first and then creating the evidences after and selecting the source record I created and things all turn out as expected.

Thanks,
Chris

[DallanQ]

I’m glad to hear that. I’m still thinking that someday we should allow you to create a new master source when creating an evidence, and we really need to allow people to attach existing media to sources and evidences.

[DallanQ]

I finally fixed the bug where the type of source (original, derivative, etc.) isn’t saved.

The “Page / volume / film #” label in the source display looks like it belongs there. It’s right under a “Periodical / series” label and a “Number of volumes” label. Is there someplace I’m missing?

I’m going to keep thinking about the ability to add a master source while creating an evidence, and the ability to add an existing media to an evidence or source.