Multiple Sources with only difference being Media

[Kell75]

I'm working on cleaning up my source citations. For example: death certificates. I have multiple individuals from the same collection in ancestry from Indiana. I save a copy of the death certificate image. When I enter the source details (date of collection, name of collection, etc). Really the only thing different in the source is the image of the death certificate I put in the media section of the source. I'm assuming that if I attach the same source number to another individual, it will show the image of the certificate I attached to the first individual, and I would add the death certificate image making it look like the same image applies to both individuals.

Is it best to put the death certificate image in the source or like I would in the persons media no different than a headshot of the individual? Or is it best practice to create another source with the same fields and basic info but add the media for the second person only on it. So I would essentially have hundreds of sources with the same info in the same fields, but they would have different media files saved to them for each individual certificate?

[Blaise A. Darveaux]

There lies the difference between those that lump sources and those that split sources. Many discussions of this are in these forums.

In my mind, the death certificate itself is a source, so should be given its own source number. It is the source of information about the people whose names are on it (especially the one who died.)

Where you got this source (for example, Ancestry.com or My Heritage.com, etc.) can be put on a line for the purpose of indicating where you got "the source".

A simpler way to think about it is if you were in school and had to write a report and you had to cite where you got the information. Would you give "the library" as the source for all your information. No, you would give the name of the book and page numbers that you found the information. Where you got the book is secondary to the name of the book.

[theKiwi]

What Blaise said.

There is no penalty for having multiple sources that are identical save for the image attached to them, although really each image would have differing explanatory text to it as well, beyond saying "it came from Ancestry"

Roger

[eric.vanbeest]

There are two ways of doing this:

Like Blaise and Roger, I use the sources to refer to single certificates or documents where they can be separated. For numbered birth, marriage or death certificates this is fairly simple, as perhaps direct page references in the original source book. In other cases, for example PDFs of transcripts of church baptism volumes, this becomes more awkward. Then I resort to method 2.

Method 2 has sources referencing to a larger entity, like a whole book in itself. Reunion does allow referencing a page in detail – the Detail notes column of the source. So if the source is a book, you would still be able to pinpoint the page in the book that is the sourced reference. Unfortunately, this would not allow linking in single images of the pages.

There's no harm in creating separate sources for direct documents, like birth, marriage or death certificates. This does require a bit more work but does better identify information sources. Reunion doesn't mind at all; I'm past 100,000 sources and 60,000 source images and those are not slowing it down.

[Blaise A. Darveaux]

"I'm past 100,000 sources and 60,000 source images..."

I am just curious, Eric, how did you accumulate so many sources. I have been working on my family for about 45 years and have only about 1200. Maybe I am slower at things but it takes me several minutes to make a source and to add the information that the source is used for. It would take me many years of full time work to add 100,000, not including the researching time to find those sources. Have you downloaded them from online sources? I have never had a paid subscription to any site, even Ancestry.com, so I don't really know how easy it could be if all it takes is a click of a button to add a source. All my sources have been added one at a time, by hand. Again, not judging, just curious.

[eric.vanbeest]

Blaise:–

Yes/No is the short answer.

The vast majority of people in the family tree are from Holland. Finding sources is easy as most municipalities have made their old civili registration records available online (via wiewaswie.nl or openarchieven.nl). Pair this with an applescript that reads the data in the records and creates the people & source reference, and downloads images of the associated record, I am able to add large amounts of source material in a relatively short space of time.

I have looked at FamilySearch in the past and I use this when I reach dead ends, or indeed when looking for records of emigrants. I am mindful that information there, while more accurate than Ancestry or MyHeritage, can still be woefully wrong. They have my oldest direct ancestor wrong, for example.