Source Citations in Names, Events, and Facts
What's In the Source Citations List?
Citing the Source of a Name, Event, or Fact
Citing a Source From a Web Browser
Citing a Source From the Source Window
Data Entry and the Detail Field
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Source Citations in Names, Events, and Facts
Source citations appear in the family view, as described here.
Citations also appear, and are entered/edited, in the Name, Events, and Facts sections of the Edit Person panel. (Citations in notes are described here.)
To open the Name, Events, or Facts section of the Edit Person panel, click directly on any field in the family view (or click the name of the husband or wife in the family view, and then select the Name/Events/Facts section).
Citation information for the selected field will be displayed in the Source Citations title bar.
If the selected field has citations, the number of citations will appear to the right of the field name in the Source Citations title bar.
To see the list of citations, the Source Citation panel must be open (the disclosure triangle pointing down.) If the source citations panel is not open, click on the disclosure triangle on the left side of the source citations title bar.
The citations listed in the Source Citations panel depend on the highlighted or selected field in the top of the window. For example, the Events section is showing and the cursor is blinking in the Birth Date field, the Source Citations list includes those citations relating to the Birth event.
Moving the cursor to the Death place field will show a list of citations linked to the death event, and the name of the selected in the Source Citations title bar will change to "Death." The Date, Place, and Memo field for events share the same list of sources. If there is a different source for a date and place, a note should be made in the Detail field.
Each event can have independent sources. Conversely, any source can be cited by different events, and by different events for different people. For example, if a birth and death date are derived from exactly the same source, the list of sources for birth will be the same as the list of sources for death.
The Source Citations panel can be resized by clicking on the title bar of the citations panel and dragging it up or down.
Tip: Hovering the mouse over a citation in the Source Citations list will show the button. Clicking the button will show a preview of the source record. Learn more.
What's In the Source Citations List?
Each line in the Source Citations list contains...
Source Citations List Shortcuts
Several shortcuts are available when Control-clicking a citation in the Source Citations list of the Edit Person panels. These include...
To document (or cite) the source of a name, event, or fact, follow these steps...
Note: | In the Name section of the Edit Person panel, all fields are treated as one for purposes of source documentation. For example, you can't have different source citations for the title and the last name. Similarly, in the Event section, the Date, Place, and Memo field for events share the same list of source citations. However, in both of these cases you can use the Detail field to distinguish the data supplied by a source. |
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Citing a Source From a Web Browser
Source records can be created by dragging and dropping web page addresses (URLs) from a web browser into a family file to create a new source record and citation. For example, if an online obituary is posted for somebody in your family file, you can view the obituary in your web browser and then drag it's address (from the address field at the top of the web browser) and drop that onto the Death Date field in Reunion's Edit Person/Events panel. Same is true for birth announcements, marriage records, social media announcements, archived genealogical data, etc. Learn more.
Citing a Source From the Source Window
When the Source window is open, the current source record can be cited by clicking and dragging the little shovel icon in the bottom-left corner of the Source window. Just drag and drop the shovel icon into any field. (For example, into the Birth Date field in the Edit Person window.)
Using Source Records from Another Family File
Source records can be dragged and dropped from one family file to another family file, automatically creating a new source record and citation. Learn more.
(The basic concept of the Citation Detail field is explained here.)
The Citation Detail field for name, event, and fact citations is limited to 255 characters.
The Date, Place, and Memo field for events share the same list of sources. If you have a different source for a date and place, you can make a note in the Detail field that the source you're citing only applies to the date (or place). For example, in the Detail field you could enter something like: "Date only." This need only be done in cases where you have a date and place for a particular event, and where the source of the date differs from the source of the place. Similarly, if you find a first name from one source and a last name from a different source, you can use the Detail field to distinguish the particular piece of information to which the source relates. If you choose include the citation detail with endnotes or with the source citations.
click the button, and click Sources, you can tell Reunion toMany people use the Detail field to describe what specific information a source provided. For example, let's say you link a transcribed interview with your grandmother to her father's birth information. In the Detail field, you might put, "Approximate date, precise location given." Then you link a Family Bible source which lists the exact date, but no location. In the Detail field for that link, you could enter, "Precise date given."
In this instance, the Detail field gives you the ability to designate how accurate a given source is for the information to which it is linked. Additionally, it lets you assess the accuracy of all linked sources at a glance, so you can quickly determine whether this new source you've added is the most reliable for a given piece of information (rather than having to read through all the original sources to make that determination).
If you routinely include citation detail, you can instruct Reunion to automatically put the cursor in the Detail field immediately after you add source citations. To do this...
Otherwise, the cursor will remain in the top of the Edit Person panel in the other data entry fields (date, place, etc.) when you add a source.