I’m just starting out with Gramps so forgive a question that may have already been asked. I searched topics and didn’t find anything relevant, so here goes…
For many years now my “database” has been a MS Word file (yeah, that’s right, all 32MB of it). I use FamilySearch extensively, and try to have a FS citation for every event. To make my life easier, I wrote a script that works with FS’s “Copy Citation” button. My script parses the copied citation, peels off the URL, and writes the result as an endnote hyperlinked to the source image.
Are there any Gramps plug-ins that do something similar? Meaning, on FS I would click “Copy Citation” then in Gramps run a Tool (Gramplet?) that would add a citation including the URL?
Assuming there are none such, I’d love to take a whack at implementing this. Just need a pointer to developer documentation.
There are a variety of options for interacting with FamilySearch. It could use a volunteer to assess which are reasonable for a user new to Gramps and comment about them. Certainly, moving forward needs some feedback.
You can import a download tree from FamilySearch to import as a starting point. There are a few threads about that. @ennoborg normally recommends the synchronization functions with FS in RootsMagic. They have an advantage in that they can execute a developer agreement with FS. The Gramps project doesn’t have a corporate entity that can make such agreements. So we cannot gain access to the resources and individual developers are probably prohibited from shared the proprietary information gained through their agreements.
Probably the most integrated feature for Gramps is a set of addons called PersonFS written by Jean Michault. It includes a Gramplet for visually comparing, a tool for importing and a tool for comparing. You can read about it in the English translations of his README.en.md on GitHub.
And Richard K. Miller, creator of Goldie May (a browser plugin that helps coordinate research with FamilySearch) has offered to talk with add developers to let Gramps leverage his tool. (It could be as simple as a Report that spawns a browser window with a JSON or GEDCOMX with key data about the active person.) And Goldie May will export a CSV research log that could probably be imported into Gramps too. His product has a free tier and 2 subscription tiers.
You can get an assist climbing the learning curve by watching a few Tutorial Videos
The presentation show one way of approaching data entry. But there are multiple ways of doing most things in Gramps. And even more ways when you install addons. (See Roughing in a tree with the pedigree chart gramplets for another approach.) And take advantage of the Gramps clipboard (and/or Collections Clipboard addon, persistent variants of the Clipboard) sooner rather than later.
Ask any questions you like. Most of us have strong opinions but we like to help.
Can you give us some more details about this? Are you splitting the citation text provided by FamilySearch, so that parts of it can be added to a source object, and other parts to a linked citation, and some other parts to a note? Or does endnote simply mean a Gramps note linked to the image, and not using the source and citation objects at all?
I ask this, because Gramps uses the source, citation, and repository structures introduced by FamilySearch in the GEDCOM standard, 5.5.1, and the current FamilySearch site does not follow that standard, but uses another much simpler structure, with formatted citations in some American style that I really don’t like, and don’t want to use here in Europe.
And because of this, I’m very much interested in a tool that takes the formatted citation apart, and gives me the fields, so that I can format my citations, like footnotes and endnotes in a more flexible way, so that I can adapt my reports to local standards.
Adding to what Enno said, you should also consider what you may do with the data after. For Example you can use Forms to record data however if you are going to upload your data to another site, any data in an Attribute is not included in the gedcom. There are numerous ways to record the data in Gramps so you should test your process to ensure everything works as you expect before proceeding too far.
For example, I include the URL in the Page/Vol field because that is a recognized gedcom field. I put the body of the citation in a citation note, also because it is part of the gedcom protocol. This works well in reports too.
Dave
@emyoulation Thank you for the welcome and the links. I’ll dive into those.
@ennoborg Currently my code merely grabs the URL from the FS citation so that I can write an endnote in my Word doc with a hyperlink to the original image. Example:
“United States Census, 1880,” database with images, FamilySearch (FamilySearch.org : 24 December 2015), Georgia > De Kalb > Stone Mountain > ED 54 > image 7 of 38; citing NARA microfilm publication T9, (National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C., n.d.).
I can easily parse out additional information. I’m particularly intrigued with the notion of storing more of this information in GEDCOM. I really want to focus on standard GEDCOM fields so that I have long-term reusability of the data for loading to additional sites, sharing with others, etc.
@Davesellers Thanks for the information. I need to learn a lot more about GEDCOM fields and standards. I’m moving off my hacky proprietary solution in MS Word, and want to implement a longer term solution.
In this example, one possible strategy is to split the citation by commas, taking into account that the 1st comma sits between quotation marks, and should not be seen as a separator. This means that you get three parts, of which the 1st is the source title, and the 2nd the publishing information. These 2 can both be stored in a source object.
In this case, the 3rd field ends at the semicolon, because what we have here is a layered citation, for which you can find a perfect explanation on the Evidence Explained site, in this article written by Elizabeth Shown Mills:
If we ignore the part behind that semicolon for a minute, we can argue that the 3rd part can be very well stored in the vol./page field of the citation, because it explains where in the source the information was found, and a microfilm image is similar to a page.
In this citation, there is no information about the date, other than in te source title, but if you can look at the image, you may find a specific date for this page in the census. And if you cite information for a particular person or family, you may also find a line number (or a range) that you can add to the vol/page field. But doing that means, that you’re willing to expand the citation beyond what FS gives you.
In a situation like this, I put the citing part in a research note, attached to the citation, in order to have a reference just in case that I’m able to visit the NARA, either in person, or on-line. OTOH, it might be, that the whole database is based on this particular publication T9. And if that’s true, you can better attach the citing part as a note to the source.
Things get a bit more complex with a citation like this, for an uncle of mine:
“Nederland, Indexen van de Archieven, Primaire Archiefstukken (BS en DTB), 1600-2000,” database, FamilySearch (FamilySearch.org : 22 August 2017), Henricus Borgsteede in entry for Theodorus Hendricus Maria Bense and Jacoba Cornelia Borgsteede, Marriage 23 Oct 1929, Amsterdam, Noord-Holland, Netherlands; from database, openarchives (https://www.openarch.nl : 2016); citing Haarlem, inventory number , record number Reg.5F fol. 38; ; Noord-Hollands Archief.
This one has 3 layers, where FamilySearch shows data from the Dutch open archives site, which in turn sites a particular record stored in a provincial archive. And even though this looks quite long, it’s still incomplete, because the inventory number is missing, which is the call number of the original source in the provincial archive. You can see the original here:
And for this one, I will probably ignore FamilySearch, and cite the original, which has a nice scan in color.
And to complicate things even further: The document shown here was also filmed by the LDS, years ago, and that scan is available too. And some indexes still cite those films, instead of the local site mentioned here.
In my experience, automating actions eventually reaches a point of diminishing return, beyond which “the juice ain’t worth the squeeze” as we say in the States. From what you’re describing, automating citation handling has such a point.
I’m going to park my thinking on this for now, as I first need to get all of my notes from my MS Word doc into Gramps. Besides the major life events, I have events such as witnessing a land deed, providing security on a guardian bond, etc. All of these events have citations, most including links to FS images. Ideally I want to enter all of this into Gramps in such a way that all of the information, including the URLs, can be written to GEDCOM if needed. Is there a doc on the site that can help me with this?
There may be a much easier way, which is to forget about Gramps, and try RootsMagic instead. It has a free version that you can use as long as you like, a direct interface to Ancestry, FamilySearch, and a hints feature for these two, and Find-My-Past, and My Heritage. It’s also very flexible with citations, giving you the opportunity to use any template you like, and create your own, and its GEDCOM export is also quite good, meaning that it uses a minimal amount of extensions, and exports formatted ones in such a way that most programs understand them, even if they don’t support templates.
I use it as a secondary program, because it doesn’t speak Dutch, while Gramps does, and is better than most programs made here.
Thank you very much for the referral to RootsMagic. I particularly like it’s concept of Fact Sentences. That is precisely what I’ve been capturing in my Word doc, even to the point of trying to maintain a standard format/layout of each type of fact. This may be the tool that I use to at least migrate my Word “database” into a real database, even if it’s not my long-term solution. Thanks again!