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Archiver > TMG > 2003-05 > 1051878817


From: "Caroline Gurney" <>
Subject: Re: [TMG] A little advise please
Date: Fri, 2 May 2003 13:33:37 +0100
References: <1d9.8b4f507.2be3495a@aol.com>


Barb wrote:

> > These formats are only "accepted" in the USA. They have no relevance to
> > anyone in other countries.
> >
>
> I'm curious. Are there any websites where I could see samples of the type
of
> report "accepted" by genealogy journals and outside the US?

Barb,

Jonas has posted links to a genealogical format which is the most common
standard in Swedish and Finnish publications but you won't find anything
similar for the UK because it doesn't exist.

Journals of various types are published by a number of national family
history organisations (the Society of Genealogists, the Institute of
Heraldic & Genealogical Studies, the Guild of One Name Studies, the
Federation of Family History Societies) and by the numerous county or
regional family history societies (FHS). To my knowledge, none of these
societies lays down a specific format in which work must be presented in
order for it to be published. Certainly, this is the case for all the
journals to which I currently subscribe or have done in the past.

You will notice that I wrote "journals" without an initial capital J. These
are *not* "Journals" in the sense that they have some prestigious existence
of their own. It is the organisations that matter, not their journals, which
are simply means for the society and its membership to communicate with each
other. There is no particular kudos attached to having an article published
in one of them - indeed, editors are usually chronically short of material
and forever issuing appeals for the membership to write something. What
interests the readership is the content of a particular article. How it is
presented (provided it is clear and cites its sources) is not important.

After several years on this list, I know that friends in the USA have a hard
time getting their heads round our laissez-faire approach & the fact that we
have no Mills or Lackey to tell us how to cite our sources (and indeed would
bitterly resent it if anyone tried). Perhaps it would help to remember that
we have no written constitution or codified system of law either - this way
of doing things is something deeply entrenched in our national character.

If there is anything like a universal standard, it would be for drawing
family trees, where the British convention has been to use a drop line
pedigree chart in the format:

Father = Mother
|
________
| |
Child Child

I hope my drawing comes through clearly in other people's e-mail programs.
Marie Lynskey's website gives some beautiful examples of this layout at
http://www.ml.clara.net/trees/trees.html .

However, none of the American produced family history programs draw trees in
this way and so one increasingly sees computer-generated trees, drawn in the
American style, published in family history journals.

I am a student on the Correspondence Course in Genealogy with the Institute
of Genealogical and Heraldic Studies (IHGS), which awards genealogical
qualifications which are accepted for membership of The Association of
Genealogists and Researchers in Archives (AGRA), although membership of AGRA
is, I think, more commonly gained by practical experience (see:
http://www.ihgs.ac.uk/courses/qualifications.php and
http://www.agra.org.uk/). The IHGS have so far laid down no rules for the
presentation of my work (apart from the obvious "cite your sources")
*except* a requirement to submit hand-drawn drop-line pedigrees because no
family history program produces acceptable ones. I am currently working on
such a chart & am using Marie Lynskey's book "Family Trees - A Manual for
their Design Layout & Display" to help me do it (see:
http://www.ml.clara.net/books/books.html ).

It is a big wish of UK users of TMG, and those in the British tradition in
Australia and New Zealand, that VCF would allow us the option to draw charts
in our "native" format.

Caroline Gurney
Portsmouth, UK


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