TMG-L Archives

Archiver > TMG > 2005-10 > 1128193341


From: "DeAnna Burghart" <>
Subject: RE: [TMG] Using Exhibits for transcriptions
Date: Sat, 1 Oct 2005 12:02:21 -0700
In-Reply-To: <433ECB15.2090202@nm.net>


An ingeneous system, Michael. Thanks for taking the time to detail it. I
don't think I'll be adopting it whole hog, but I've saved it to look at in
the future as I put more of my source data on disk.

DeAnna

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
DeAnna Burghart
TMG Shortcuts, Variables and Report Cheat Sheets (Word and PDF)
http://members.cox.net/danieleb765/genealogy/


-----Original Message-----
From: Michael J. Hannah [mailto:]
Sent: Saturday, October 01, 2005 10:45 AM
To:
Subject: [TMG] Using Exhibits for transcriptions


In a previous thread "Denise Merritt" <>
asked about "Use Roles, Exhibits or what?" and got some good advice
from the various gurus on this list. John Cardinal especially well
described various data entry options. She said "I'm not really asking
so much how to enter the source information as how to connect this to
the people...how do I enter this once and then connect it to all the
people mentioned." Well, here is at least one method to do that.

In a similar thread Nick Shelley <> asked the question
"So what do you do with your exhibits?" for which he got a "resounding
lack of response". Well here is at least one response.

Thanks to the flexibility of TMG there are lots of ways to deal with
exhibits, and the "right" way is simply the one that works best for you.
I use text exhibits to accomplish the issue Denise raised. In hopes
someone may find it useful to adopt some or all of my method for their
purposes I will describe my system.

A key part of my system is "pseudo" people for sources. I have both
specific kinds of "pseudo" people for special kinds of sources, for
example Census records, and general Source "pseudo" people for more
generic types of sources. The way I deal with examples like Denise's
would be to have a source "person" for her book "History of Clay County
Missouri" which matches/mirrors the source in the Master Source List.
I use my structured source abbreviation as the Given name and my
repository abbreviation as the Surname. For both abbreviations I use
a system that makes them unique and allows them to sort nicely. I also
precede this "person's" sort Given and Surname with a plus sign to avoid
these names sorting within "normal" names in Picklists and such. For
example, the Given might be "BOOK Mo Clay County Hist" and the Surname
might be "LIB Albq Public Genealogy". I also have a custom Flag which
distinguishes all "pseudo" people from "normal" people for reports, etc.

I then give this "person" a custom tag which I have called "Transcript".
This tag has a text Exhibit attached (it can be either internal or
external, whichever method you prefer) which is the full transcription
of this passage from this source, properly cites the Source with normal
Citation Detail to this tag, and links all people mentioned as
witnesses. The Source "person" is the Principal but is given a custom
role of "Extract". The date is when I did the transcription, but the
sort date is the date of the data, e.g. 7 Oct 2003 and 22 Nov 1845.
The "Extract" role sentence uses the three part memo as
[:CR:][:CR:][BOLD:]Extract[:BOLD]< [M1]>< concerning
[BOLD:][M2][:BOLD]>< mentioning [R:Mentioned]>
transcribed<[D]><[L]>< by [M3]>
where M1 is like a citation detail, for example "page 280", M2 is a
brief description of the entire passage transcribed, for example
"outstanding farmers of the year 1845", and M3 is the name of the
transcriber, usually me. I have a custom "Individual Narrative"
report defined which filters for only such Source people, printing
only Transcript tags, and set to print Exhibits in line. I choose
to insert "[:CR:][:TAB:]" in the beginning of every exhibit, and as
needed for paragraphs within the transcription. I enter my source
abbreviation as the Exhibit Caption and the exact Citation Detail
in the Exhibit Description.

Each individual mentioned is a witness with the custom role "Mentioned"
and this role sentence using a three part separate witness memo:
[W] is mentioned< [WM1]> in an extract of ([P1G])<, [M1]><,
concerning [M2]>, transcribed< [D]><[L]>< by [M3]>.<"[WM2]">< [WM3>
Note that the sentence uses both the witness memo information which
is unique for each of the witnesses and the main memo data. WM1 might
be "as a successful pig farmer", and WM2 a copy/paste of what it
says about just him. WM3 is anything else I want to mention such as
"This might explain his aversion to pork" Since P1G is the source
abbreviation, I can use it as an identifier, but it does not generally
look good in reports. However, I normally do not include this custom
Transcript tag for printing in final reports about "normal" people.
I include the tag for detail reports for my use and use the tag
because it now shows up in each witness' Person View with their role
of "Mentioned" to let me quickly see how they were mentioned. The
actual information I expand into other tags, such as Occupation,
which do print in my final reports.

This allows me to have one tag, with one exhibit, linked to all the
mentioned people. The Person View shows a Transcript tag with the
role of Mentioned and the Principal identifies the source. Clicking
on that one tag gets me to the one exhibit any time I want from any
of the witnesses, and shows me the list of other witnesses. Clicking
on the tag's Principal takes me to the Source person and lets me see
all the various transcriptions/exhibits that I have entered for that
source. Sorting by Source Surnames shows me all source transcriptions
from a particular repository. And my special report of source people
prints all my transcriptions/exhibits at once with proper source
citations/links to the sources, and identifies all people mentioned.

Just one person's method. As others have said, hope this helps.

Michael Hannah
Albuquerque


==== TMG Mailing List ====
Send all messages and replies to <>.

This thread: