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Archiver > TMG > 2002-04 > 1017746860


From: "Kuschner, Jonas" <>
Subject: [TMG] Hierarchical ordering of sources in future TMG?
Date: Tue, 02 Apr 2002 13:27:40 +0200 (CEST)


I bought TMG 1 1/2 years ago, and have found it in many ways very flexible and
useful. Still, I have not yet entered all of my data into the program, because
of the heavy work process it requires: every entry of data requires two,
sometimes several, mouse-clicks or keyboard entries, and a change of screen
which takes a couple of seconds. Like everybody else I have been waitin for TMG
ever since I bought TMG 5, and I hope that the new version will have not only
the right-mouseclick shortcuts already advertised, but also dropdown menus in
each field with previously entered names/places/sources. This is available in
other programs and would considerably speed up data entry.

Another thing on my wish-list, and this is fundamental to the way I work, is
the possibility to order sources hierarchically, the way one would normally do
in making a list of references in a dissertation. TMG seems to force me to
either make an arbitrary numbered order based on when a source was first used,
or an equally arbitrary alphabetical order with primary sources and secondary
sources intermingled.

As someone asked here a few months ago for people using TMG for other work than
purely genealogical work, I want to mention that I use it in my dissertation
work. I study the social and administrative structure of the early (late 18th
and early 19th century) Jewish congregations in Sweden. I enter the individual
Jewish immigrants and their families, but also things like city authorities and
governmental bodies. I have for instance entered the office of the Lord
Lieutenant (landshövding) of Gothenburg as a person in my database. Each report
written from this office to the King that somehow concerns the Jewish
congregation, individual Jews or companies with Jewish owners is then entered
as an event, with the individuals or corporations mentioned as witnesses.

Back to the issue of this post: In case somebody doesn't understand what I mean
with "hierarchical ordering of sources": in a dissertation one would normally
divide all references into two major groups:

1. Primary sources
2. Secondary sources

There is a third group which can go with either of these two groups: Published
primary sources, i.e. a published edition of ministerial records, protocols or
whatever. As these are often published with large parts of introduction and
commentary, and as they share bibliographic characteristics with secondary
sources, they can often be included in group 2. Thus one can find different
models

1. Primary sources
a. Unpublished
b. Published
2. Secondary sources

OR

1. Primary (unpublished) sources
2. Secondary sources and printed primary sources
(either divided in two groups as above or intermingled in alphabetical
order)

Group 1 or 1a, unpublished sources, are then ordered in a hierarchy, as such:
location, repository, archive/collection, series, volume, document, page. The
number of levels in this hierarchy is dependent on the size of each archive in
question and on the needs to give the reader sufficient information without
wasting paper. It can look something like this:

1. Primary sources
....Stockholm, Sweden
.......Riksarkivet (the National archives)
...........Ericsbergsarkivet (The Ericsberg archives)
...........Svea hovrätts arkiv (The archives of the Svea court of appeals)
...........Justitiedepartementets arkiv (The archives of the Dept. of Justice)
.......Stockholms stadsarkiv (the Stockholm city archives)
...........Handelskollegiets arkiv (The Stockholm city board of trade archives)
...........Hedvig Eleonora församlings arkiv (HE parish archives)

....Uppsala, Sweden
.......Uppsala University Library
...........Palmskiöldska samlingen (The Palmskiöld collection)
.......Uppsala Landsarkiv (Uppsala provincial archives)
...........Munktorp församlings arkiv (Munktorp parish archives)
...........Enköpings församlings arkiv (Enköping parish archives)
...........Uppsala rådhusrätts arkiv (Uppsala city court and council archives)

etc. etc.

Any researcher will find that the sources can be divided in a hierarchical
structure of this type, but the number of levels may vary. One can, for
instance, often skip the location level and go directly to the repository
level. In the case of something kept in the National archives the levels may be
many, in the case of great grandmas collection of letters, kept in aunt
Mildreds closet (fictional example), there would usually be only one level
beyond the repository and no need to go any further:

....London, England
.......Mrs Mildred Smith, née Jones, 12 Portland Place, London
...........Collection of letters to Sara Jones, née Anderson (1834-1911)
...........Album of photographs from William & Sara Jones, ca 1880s.
...........William Jones' diary from the Crimean war

Each of the (real) archives given as the lowest level in the Swedish example
above can be further subdivided: Parish records can be divided into birth &
baptismal records, death & burial records, church financial records and so on.
Court records may be divided, for instance, into criminal cases and civil
cases.

(Excursus - don't read if you find it boring: Please note that the order
indicated in the last paragraph is not an arbitrary division based on the
individual researchers personal use of these records, but the division in which
the archives have been ordered either by its originator [the church, court or
whatever] or by the archivist or librarian at the repository responsible for
ordering the archive or collection. In Sweden, where the principle of
provenance [i.e. the principle that the order of an archive should reflect the
origin of the records and the original use of the records by the originator,
e.g. the church] has been the leading one for about a century, it is usually
the first. Older archives may be ordered according to other principles, such as
the persons or places of main interest in each document [i.e. the Biographica
and Topographica collections of the National archives]. Personal archives,
which often arrive in little order whatsoever, are also sometimes ordered
according to the preferences of the individual archivist doing the work.)

In TMG it seems that the most important ordering criterium is not location or
repository, but the type of source. The default categories of sources, BTW, are
of little use to me, as they originate in an American research environment, and
I have had to create new categories better adapted to my needs. But for me
category is in any case not the primary ordering criterium. That is the
location of the source.

If I go to the Master repository list, it gives me no information on what
sources are in each repository. If I go to the master source list, it just
lists all the sources without any division. I have solved this temporarily, by
beginning each source abbreviation with one or several abbreviations indicating
its character as unpublished primary source, its location/repository,
collection etc. It is a workaround, and I do not find it entirely satisfactory.

Rather than an approximation of the way I would list the sources in e.g. a Word
document, I want TMG to do it the proper way but without the limitations of a
printed list of references. In the latter case, one would not go all the way
down to the individual page. It is not necessary, it is available in the
footnote anyway, and it would waste space. In a computer program one can have
an unlimited number of levels, every way down to the page or paragraph. On the
other hand, the computer screen creates limitations of its own: a list which is
too long requires scrolling and one will soon find oneself lost. A hierarchical
system with collapsible levels would solve this.


What I WISH is this:

-- The possibility to order and work with sources hierarchically in whichever
way I like and in as many levels as I need. This can be done by combining the
master repository list and the master source list into a new kind of source
list. The structure will be similar to the collapsible folders with which every
user of MS Windows is acquainted.

-- Easy access to this hierarchy of sources through a dropdown (or popup) menu
from the data entry field.


There are many things I can do with TMG which are simply not possible with any
other genealogy program. But it is not perfect. Will my wishes come true in TMG
5? Or will I have to wait for 5.1, 5.2 or TMG 6?


Sorry if I bored some people with my pedantic views on this...

Regards
Jonas Kuschner

----------------------------------------------
Jonas Kuschner,
MA, PhD-student, Uppsala University, Sweden
http://www.afro.uu.se
Editor of Släkt och Hävd - Sweden's leading journal of genealogy since 1950
http://www.genealogi.net/Veta_mer_om_GF/SoH/soh.htm

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