A "best practices" question about city directories.
I have another "best practices" question. Example: 3 city directory images (1940, 1941, 1943) that show a couple living at the same address in each entry. This covers a period of 4 years. Should I made 3 individual residence entries (one for each year) or one residence entry with a date span of 1940-1943?
On the one head I think that reports might be easier to read with the combined entry. On the other hand, "technically" I don't know for certain that they lived at the same address in 1942 so I should use individual entries.
My current thinking is that for data entry I might make individual entries and then periodically combine entries as the picture becomes clearer. So in my example I might have a residence entry for 1940-1941 and another entry for 1943. If I ever find confirmation of 1942 then I can fold it and the 1943 entry into the combined record. The only hassle with that is making sure to copy my sources for the individual records to the combined record before removing the individual records.
I know the bottom line is "whatever works for me" but I'm curious how others might approach this. This whole "city directory" exercise I'm going through is the first time I've used the 'copy event' functionality and I'm loving it!
thanks,
james
I'd make one entry with a date of 1941-1943, indicate in the notes field that 1942 was missing and attach the 3 images.
ReplyDeleteSometimes when there are images for lots of years (I've seen 20 for 1 family) I'll just attach several images, list the specific years and state that only example images were saved.
Since the purpose of citing our sources is to make it easy for others to go the document, I personally feel that Ron's method would be the clearest. It tells one immediately where you found the information and that the couple lived at the same location for multiple years. Having separate entries would not do that.
ReplyDeleteAs to images, the only downside I see for not having every year is that one doesn't see who the neighbors are.
I add them individually in my working notes. That way I can see where they are on my timeline. Time, it looks cleaner. If, when I publish, I might combine them for a cleaner look.
ReplyDelete