Genealogy?

A place for users to ask each other questions, make suggestions, and discuss Bookends.
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akc
Posts: 1
Joined: Fri Sep 16, 2011 11:06 pm

Genealogy?

Post by akc »

Are there any/many of you using Bookends for genealogy research and citations?

If you are - I read that it could be really helpful, especially to access what resources might be available and where, but that the format may not be exactly the correct citation for genealogy (says as what is in Evidence. Is that a true statement? If so, can you set up a custom citation formats that can be easily reused?

Thanks!
andyho
Posts: 4
Joined: Tue Mar 05, 2019 2:41 am

Re: Genealogy?

Post by andyho »

Yes, it is possible to set up citations in accordance with Evidence Explained (3rd Ed.), an 895-page reference book about genealogical citation by Elizabeth Shown Mills. Defining custom citations requires going into Biblio > Formats Manager. To test this, I've defined two small examples that generate citations according to EE 237 (digital images: federal census, U.S.) and EE 314 (church image copies: digitized online).

The problem is the 170 Quick Check Models (i.e., citation types) in Mills' book. Bookends offers 40 citation types, a generous number, but not enough to cover all 170 defined by Evidence Explained.

As a workaround, it may be possible to "pack" 5 different sets of data fields within each Bookends type. The formatted reference in Bookends would then show 5 different citations, one for each of the 5 sets of data fields. With 40 different Bookends types, this would generate 200 different types of genealogical citation, more than enough to cover the 170 Quick Check Models.

The desired result is an EE-styled citation (full note) that can be copied and pasted into an online family tree.

If there is a more elegant way to generate 170 different citation types, I would love to hear about it!
alanterra
Posts: 77
Joined: Wed Dec 20, 2017 4:55 pm

Re: Genealogy?

Post by alanterra »

Andy

As someone who keeps thinking about getting into genealogy, did you post your formats and citation types (reference types, I think) anywhere? Others might want to use or build on them.

Thanks

Alan
andyho
Posts: 4
Joined: Tue Mar 05, 2019 2:41 am

Re: Genealogy?

Post by andyho »

Alan,

I'm nowhere close to that. I've just started using Bookends to manage genealogical references. Evidence Explained (Elizabeth Shown Mills) has 170 QuickCheck citation types. Since Bookends is limited to 40 types, I've adopted the following approach.

1. For each of the 170 QuickCheck models, create a new reference to serve as a template;
2. Populate the template's data fields with the parameter names employed by the QuickCheck model;
3. Using Formats Manager, enter the field order needed to reproduce a citation in Evidence Explained format.

For example, in the case of QuickCheck model EE094, I've decided upon the following assignments:
a = WEBSITE OWNER / CREATOR
t = DOCUMENT TITLE (QUOTED EXACTLY)
P- = PAGE
d = DATE ACCESSED
s = WEB SITE TITLE
z = URL
u2 = COLLECTION
u3 = ITEM TYPE OR FORMAT
u4 = CREDIT LINE

With these field assignments, the following field order in Formats Manager creates a citation in Evidence Explained format:
“u2,” a, s (z : $accessed $d), u3, "t," $p. ^pp. $p-; $Crediting “$u4.”

Whenever I need to create a new citation modeled after EE094, I copy and paste this field order into Formats Manager. Then copy and paste the formatted citation from Bookends into whatever genealogy software I am using. For safekeeping, I also copy & paste the Bookends field order and the resultant citation into the Bookends' Notes field.

The difficulty is that this has to be repeated EVERY TIME a new genealogical citation is created from a template.

In the long run, it might be easier to use a dedicated genealogy app that creates citations in the proper format. The drawbacks are that In doing so, one gives up control to the genealogy software. Another issue is that each genealogy app interprets Evidence Explained differently. And some have criticized Evidence Explained as being too complex. It is a situation that begs for a killer app to generate genealogical citations.

The following web sites are relevant to this discussion:

https://www.evidenceexplained.com
http://jytangledweb.org/genealogy/evidencestyle/
jeffcdo
Posts: 1
Joined: Sat Jul 06, 2019 5:54 am

Re: Genealogy?

Post by jeffcdo »

This is proving to be a big hurdle for me as I attempt to adopt a Markdown-based workflow. For Genealogy I use quite a few articles from Newspapers.com and I'm not entirely sure how to enter the information manually. For example "date accessed" I'm still just testing things but I'm thinking my workaround might be to use a similar style and just tweak the end result manually. At least that way I can still use cite keys. Still it seems inefficient.
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