Jerry's Data Entry Standards

I'm documenting my personal data entry standards for genealogy, primarily for my own use so that I can remember how I decided to enter various kinds of data. Anybody else that stumbles across this page is more than welcome to borrow any of these ideas.

If you do choose to borrow any of these ideas, please do be aware that the way I enter my data is somewhat unorthodox in a number of respects. I enter the data the way I do in order to produce narrative reports that are as good looking, meaningful, and well documented as possible. In order to meet these objectives, I find that I have to deviate from certain genealogical standards. I do not apologize for doing so because I believe that a number of the genealogical standards are pretty illogical and dysfunctional. Neither Mr. Spock nor Sheldon Cooper would approve of the standards if they were genealogists. The place name standard is an egregiously bad standard, to the point that it goes so far beyond the pale of badness that a physicist would say that "it is not even wrong".

Other aspects of my data entry standards are not related to genealogical standards per se. Rather, they result from the fact that I use RootsMagic as my genealogy database of choice. On the one hand, I think that RootsMagic is far and away the best genealogy software on market. On the other hand, RootsMagic has some quirks and limitations for which I have had to develop workarounds. It is these quirks and limitations in RootsMagic which have led me to some of my non-standard ways of doing data entry.

• The most common sources for death information are death certificates, obituaries, and a grave markers. I try to obtain all three sources if they are available. In the absence of those three, I will use any other records I can come up with including compiled cemetery records, compiled funeral home records, oral family history, etc.
• Any source for death information, including each of the three primary sources for death information, has the possibility of providing incorrect information. For example, death certificates and grave markers can contain birth dates that are incorrect. I always try to remember these potential problems when I am recording deaths and their sources.
• Death sources can usually serve also as burial sources. I transcribe death certificates and obituaries into the Death Note field in RootsMagic. See the burial section of this page for information on how grave marker transcriptions are handled.
• I list death places in RootsMagic as something like St. Mary's Hospital, Knoxville, Knox County, Tennessee. If there is no city or other political subdivision at that level of the place hierarchy, then I list death places in RootsMagic as something like St. Mary's Hospital, Knox County, Tennessee
  • I enter all the place data into RootsMagic's place field, including a hospital name or other more specific place of death. RootsMagic offers a Place Detail field to contain a more specific place of death, but the Place Detail field is unlikely to be recognized by any third party genealogy software that reads RootsMagic's database or that process a GEDCOM file exported from RootsMagic.
  • I spell out the name of the state, and I omit the country when the country is the United States of America.
  • I include the word County or Parish as appropriate for locations in the United States of America.
  • I usually the place name as it was at the time of death. For example, what was St. Mary's Hospital at the time of death may now be known as St. Mary's Medical Center or Tennova Regional Medical Center.

• Whenever possible, I obtain an image of death certificate as a source for each death. It is not always possible to do so because many deaths in my database took place before death certificates were routinely issued. And for recent deaths, privacy considerations and state laws sometimes prevent the release of death certificates to anyone who is not a close family member.
  • I store all death certificates in a folder called deathcertificates under a folder called rm_media.
  • The file name for a death certificate would typically look something like the following.
    
          bray_joseph_r_death_certificate_1981.jpg
          bray_charles_l_death_index.pdf
    
    The file name includes last name, first name, and type of document. This naming convention makes it relatively easy to find specific death certificates in the list of file names. If I can't obtain an actual death certificate, I will use a death index record of some kind until I can obtain the death certificate. Originally, I did not include the year of death in the file name, but I'm beginning to do so to be sure I can distinguish the death certificates from similarly named individual. The file name reflects the individual's name as it appear on the death certificate, not their name at birth.
  • I link each image of a death certificate to a separate Master Source in RootsMagic. This procedure is somewhat unorthodox and is often described as being extreme splitting of sources. The Master Source names for a death certificate would typically look something like the following.
    
          *death certificate: Bray, Joseph R.;
           Certificate 61767; Dallas, Dallas County, Texas, 1981;
           ancestry.com (Texas, Death Certificates, 1903-1982);
           viewed 25 September 2014
           *death index: Bray, Charles L;
           Los Angeles County, California, 1974;
           www.ancestry.com (California, Death Index, 1940-1997);
           viewed 23 December 2015
    
    This naming convention makes it relatively easy to find specific Master Sources in the list of Master Sources in RootsMagic. Most of the Master Source name is derived via a copy and paste from the Footnote Sentence that RootsMagic produces for the source, so there is not all that much typing involved to produce the Master Source name. Also, I produce each new Master Source by first copying an existing one. So the copy provides a model for each new Master Source that I create. The Master Source name within RM itself is a single string of letters that fits in one line, but the length of the name makes it necessary to break it into multiple lines on this Web page.
  • I transcribe each death certificate. I enter the transcription into the Note for the Death Fact in RootsMagic, and also into the Source Text field under the Master Text tab for the Master Source in RootsMagic.
  • I use user defined Source Template in RootsMagic to format the footnote sentence for each death certificate. The footnote sentence is as follows: Death <[DeathRecordType]|Record>: [DeceasedName:Reverse];< Certificate [DeathCertificateNumber]; >[DeathPlace], [DeathYear]< [WhereViewed]; viewed [WhenViewed]>.

• The most common sources for burial information are death certificates, obituaries, and a grave markers. I try to obtain all three sources if they are available. In the absence of those three, I will use any other records I can come up with including compiled cemetery records, compiled funeral home records, oral family history, etc.
• Any source for burial information, including each of the three primary sources for burial information, has the possibility of providing incorrect information. For example, a grave marker can exist without a burial, death certificates and grave markers can contain birth dates that are incorrect, and there are many re-interments in my part of the country because of TVA dam building activities. These are just a few examples, and there are many other possible errors in primary sources for burial information. I always try to remember these potential problems when I am recording burials and their sources.
• Burial sources can usually serve also as death sources. I transcribe death certificates and obituaries into the Death Note field in RootsMagic.
• For many years, I transcribed the text from grave markers into the Burial Note field in RootsMagic. However, I have recently introduced a user defined fact in RootsMagic called GraveMarker. I transcribe the grave marker information into the Description field for the GraveMarker fact, and the sentence template for the fact is
  
        <b>Grave marker:</b>< [Desc]>
  
  This somewhat unorthodox procedure has the advantage that I can use RootsMagic's People View screen to identify individuals for whom I have entered a transcription for the grave marker and individuals for whom I haven't. It also has the advantage of making clear that there is a source specific to the grave marker. I use sort dates in RootsMagic to place the GraveMarker fact into the correct order with respect to all the other facts for the individual. Such sort dates only affect the ordering of events in RootsMagic and do not appear in reports produced by RootsMagic.
• For many years, I entered GPS coordinates for the grave marker into the Burial Note field in RootsMagic. However, I have recently introduced a user defined fact in RootsMagic called GraveGPS. I enter the GPS coordinates into the Description field for the GraveGPS fact, and the sentence template for the fact is
  
        <b>Grave GPS:</b>< [Desc]>
  
  This somewhat unorthodox procedure has the advantage that I can use RootsMagic's People View screen to identify individuals for whom I have GPS coordinates for the grave marker and individuals for whom I haven't. It also has the advantage of making clear that there is a source specific to the GPS coordinates grave marker. I obtain the GPS coordinates from the same handheld Garmin GPS device that I use for hiking. I use sort dates in RootsMagic to place the GraveGPS fact into the correct order with respect to all the other facts for the individual. Such sort dates only affect the ordering of events in RootsMagic and do not appear in reports produced by RootsMagic.
• I list a burial date only if I can document the date. Otherwise, I leave the burial date blank. If someone died on 7 Mar 1897 and I have no documentation for their burial date, then I don't think it's very useful or helpful to list their burial date as "about 8 Mar 1897". But because of the way RootsMagic orders events in its edit screens and in its reports, I do enter a sort date into RootsMagic for burials without a date to be sure that burials appear in proper timeline order. Such sort dates only affect the ordering of events in RootsMagic and do not appear in reports produced by RootsMagic.
• I list burial places in RootsMagic as something like Greenwood Cemetery, Knoxville, Knox County, Tennessee. If there is no city or other political subdivision at that level of the place hierarchy, then I list burial places in RootsMagic as something like Greenwood Cemetery, Knox County, Tennessee
  • I enter all the place data into RootsMagic's place field, including the cemetery name. RootsMagic offers a Place Detail field to contain the cemetery name, but the Place Detail field is unlikely to be recognized by any third party genealogy software that reads RootsMagic's database or that process a GEDCOM file exported from RootsMagic.
  • I spell out the name of the state, and I omit the country when the country is the United States of America.
  • I include the word County or Parish as appropriate for locations in the United States of America.
  • I enter the place name in its modern form, no matter what the name of the cemetery might have been at the time of the burial, and no matter what other changes in the place name might have taken place since the burial. I include information in RootsMagic's Burial Note field about the name of the place or cemetery at the time of the burial if it differs from the modern name.