Friday, November 09, 2007

ThinkGenealogy

ThinkGenealogy » Jumping Curves by Better Online Source Citation:
"I like the fact the WorldVitalRecords geocodes all records added to their site. Why you are at it, why don’t you add source citations in metadata/xml form following the conventions in Elizabeth Shown Mills book, Evidence Explained: Citing History Sources from Artifacts to Cyberspace?

Currently source citation is hard. When it is available, it is in text format that must be copied and pasted into your genealogy program. But source citation is vital so that proper evaluation of evidence can be done and so that constant re-examination of the same records can be avoided. If when you click on a document to download the image, the link was instead something like an rss link that has metadata with it (think rss enclosure tag) and if that xml format were a standard then genealogy software could read the information, add the image to the application, and add the proper source citation. What could be easier for a user than every time a document image is downloaded from an online database, the source was automatically cited? The software developers would be half way there as they would then just need to add a way to manually add the same information for offline sources."

Mark Tucker is a software architect by day and a family historian on as many nights and weekends as possible.
More about Mark...

The biggest newbie mistake I ever made was not adding sources to my trees from the very beginning

WorldVitalRecords geocodes all records added to their site. - Google Search

geocode: Definition and Much More from Answers.com: "A Geocode representation is derived from the following geospatial attributes: 1. Latitude 2. Longitude 3. Altitude 4. Date 5. Local Time 6. Global Time 7."

geocoding: Information and Much More from Answers.com

The problems begin with historical data - for example streets and buildings which no longer exist, or all the old ecclesiastical or administrative parishes and counties which have been replaced by newer systems at the behest of politicians.

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