Using Gramps 6.0.1 on Win 10.
I’m looking for advice on how to handle citations and images. I have started a new tree in 6.0.1 and want to revise my workflow.
Previously I would add a source/citation and then an event with the citation referenced. Finally, I add and attach any relevant gallery items to the event.
I noticed that citations can have gallery items and that gallery items can have citations. While I understand that it can be preferencce based and so long as I keep to a system I should be ok, this made me wonder what should I be doing to improve my record keeping and data handling.
Should I add a citation and add a gallery item and have them reference each other - add the gallery item to the citation and the citation to the gallery item? Do you also add the gallery item to the event?
There are so many possibilities that I’m reaching out for some advice and suggestions on how I should adjust my workflow in this.
Thank you all in advance!
Where you add a gallery item greatly depends on which report (if any) you use. Not all reports will display event and/or citation gallery records.
I use the Narrated Web to send cousins reports and this shows gallery items wherever used. In this case, I store a gallery item with the citation. I do NOT then add the citation to the gallery it proves/supports thus creating an endless loop.
If you store the gallery item in any other location (and not the citation), the event, person, or family, only then would it be appropriate to add the citation to the gallery record.
I don’t like this type of response (it’s not yours in particular, no worries between us). It’s not up to the user to manipulate their data so that it ends up appearing as they want in this or that tool. And even without that, that’s not the point.
The point, in my opinion, is to know what the fields are for and in what context to use them.
A citation is a citation of a source. This source can be an image associated with a media. The photo of Aunt Lucy’s wedding is an illustration of this wedding and can therefore be associated with the event, but it is also a source showing the participants of said wedding. The citation from this source could be used, for example, to share the event with the people present with the role “Participant” and the quote proving this participation.
But, in this image/source, someone, perhaps you, must have recognized the people seen there to make the quote “Uncle Joe present at Aunt Lucy’s wedding.” We can then use the MediaRef citation for this: Aunt Lucy indicated that it was her Uncle Joe in the photo (Source: Aunt Lucy Interview, 2025).
This was a wedding photo, but when the image is a photo of a page of a birth register containing Uncle Joe’s birth certificate, is all that necessary? Personally, I don’t think so. I attach the cropped media image of the certificate to the quote, and that’s it. The event uses this quote and doesn’t need to present the certificate itself, which is just one registry page among many.
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Any image or information about an image comes from a source, so the citation for an image should point to that source.
The image can also be an informative illustration of a given source, e.g. a photo of a page from a source, in that case, you should still make a textual reference to the source of origin of the page, even though you may attach the media file to the citation gallery or the event gallery etc.
The citation is a reference to where you actually obtained the item or entity, and/or the information about it.
Better with one too many references than one too little…
Think about references/citations as a way for other people to find the sources of information in 100 years from now, regardless of where the citation are attached.
It is better to have a redundant citation than none at all.
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I struggled with sources, citations and Media for quite some times, too.The Tutorials helped me a lot. In particular the following.
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