Paragraph breaks in source documents
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I am working my way through hundreds of hard-copy obituaries, a windfall gift from a retired genealogist in a related family. In transcribing them and adding them as source text* to the death source, I have the recurring nuisance of trying to show paragraph breaks in PGV. Running the text together makes it difficult to read. Using line breaks looks odd as well. My question has to do with your practices. How do you handle indents in a source document when transcribing them to PGV?
*By way of explanation to adding them as source text rather than notes, I consider notes to be more a casual aside to the interested researcher, whereas source text is literally the source text, the straight stuff. So I think all transcriptions are more aptly rendered as source text rather than note. Not to derail my own question, but I wanted to explain that.
Victor
I guess my practice is best summed up by disagreeing with your comment "Using line breaks looks odd as well.". Line breaks (preferably 2) are the simplest solution.
You can, I believe , also introduce "hard-spaces" (alt-160 on a WIN machine).
There is another way, that might be interesting - simply convert the obituaries to pdf files and attach them to the source as media items. Think of all the copy-typing you won't have to do!
My other thought is that as obituaries are generally related to a single event for a single individual, using a source seems over-complicated. I would add them as a media item to the death or burial event.
I use a source for each newspaper and put the transcription in as sourcetext. I transcribe line for line and don't worry about paragraph indents. Point being that the Image can be seen by the user and the transcription can be searched.
Sent from iPod Touch
Victor
As I don't display SOUR materials to casual viewers, I tend to take a different approach on obits. I put them as NOTE for the DEAT event and then apply the SOUR - Obituary, then Citation and text as to location/publication and more. We don't expose SOUR as they frequently contain living persons phone numbers, addresses and email links, as well as names and dates.
We use hard spaces, if need be, for indentation.
Hope this helps, Stephen
vhawk:
I am doing the _exact_ same thing. I had a windfall birthday gift last year of a old journal full of obits/celebrations clippings done by my late uncle and thought missing since his death 25 years ago.
I've had no problems creating SOURs for every obit, one per person and including returns to create paragraphs. I'm on a Mac but not sure if that makes difference. (Actually, no different than the way a paragraph is normally created.)
I've chosen to enter the date/place of death. Create a SOUR using as Title as "John DOE ", the date being DOD, with Author being "Daily City News". That way the SOUR Index is easier to navigate through. As text part of the SOUR I include the full obit/announcement including double spacing after the usual bit of who is left behind and details of when/where the funeral is. I use Citation Details to make the name of newspaper visible on the INDI record (repetitive but my pref). Outside of this journal, I have one of the two funeral homes online database to find obits and if their listings are either notice plus "facts-only summary" or just the facts-only summary. I credit that funeral home until I can prove the notice portion is from a newspaper.
I was going to PDF the obits but thought several hundred would add up Kb over time. Plus, it's extra work even though Macs have built-in PDF creation ability.
I realize your privacy comment Stephen but as my site isn't public, I've chosen to include everything based upon the data being found posted to this funeral home's site (1958 to present). Or in a newspaper current/archive publicly accessible online or print.
May reconsider……
For anything of any length, I put a transcript online in a blog (unless it's already online), and put the URI where I think appropriate in the GEDCOM.
Wow! I'm glad I asked because I would never have thought of some of these approaches. I need to think on these things.
Thats a good plan, Victor. We all have different solutions, and none are right or wrong. Let us know what you decide, because I for ine am never locked into a single solution. I'll gladly change (if its not too much work) if someone comes up with a better idea.