* Using Clooz with Family Historian (Legacy import)

[jmurphy]

I have recently purchased Clooz, which is a source-based program not unlike Custodian. I wanted Clooz to help me keep track of the sources I had downloaded. The plan is to use Clooz as a master list of all the things I have collected, so they'll have a place to live until I can analyze the record, and enter them into Family Historian.

The only snag, at the moment, Clooz does not export information to GEDCOM. It only exports to Legacy. So my choices are:

• run the two programs side-by-side and do double data-entry
• install Legacy and export from Clooz to Legacy and then to FH
• wait for Clooz to have a GEDCOM export
• ???

Comments welcome.

[Valkrider]

Jan

An organisation I am part of have a Google Hangout with Clooz on the 20th I will ask if there is a better way of doing what you want.

[jmurphy]

Thanks. I follow Clooz on Google+ and am signed up for the newsletter, so if Joe makes any comments to the userbase at large, I'll see them there. He's pretty good about announcing things, unlike some others (Calico Pie not included in that wisecrack).

I'm re-thinking my workflow from scratch and hope to make more effective use of both GenQuiry and Family Historian as well as taking advantage of what Clooz has to offer.

But it seems pretty clear now, having done several short-term subscriptions where I gathered as many records as I could find in one time frame, that I need to do something to keep track of the data ABOUT all the stuff I've gathered. By which I mean, what came in, what needs to be worked on, where it came from, etc.

As I get used to the new workflow, I hope to have more things planned out in advance in GenQuiry, where I can note my search strategies and progress, instead of just saying "OH SHINY" and chasing the record that appears to be the most appealing at the moment. But I would also like to have a program comparable to the ones use to keep track of my books, CDs and DVDs.

I did try entering everything into Family Historian as a source first without extracting any data. I suppose if I add them to a Need To Process sort of Named List, I could keep track of which ones hadn't been entered yet. From FH I could then send a GEDCOM over to Clooz to explore what features Clooz offers.

[Valkrider]

Jan

I have confirmed with Joe that v4 of Clooz which is due next year will have a gedcom export so that will go straight into Family Historian. He also said if Calico Pie will work with them they will make a dedicated Family Historian export.

In the mean time he suggests getting the free version of Legacy, exporting from Clooz to it and then exporting from Legacy as a gedcom for import into Family historian. It is an extra step but may give you what you want.

Clooz certainly looks interesting and I will certainly be giving the trial a work out.

[jmurphy]

Thanks for your reply. Given some of the reviews I've seen of the newest version of Legacy, I don't have confidence in Legacy's GEDCOM export, so I guess I'll wait it out. I often research families of neighbors and business associates, so I can use some of this data to experiment with Clooz.

At the moment, I am confused about the way Clooz handles sources. One of the tasks I want to do is to keep track of the newspaper pages I have downloaded, so I can have a list to cross-check by newspaper title, name and date. Obituaries, wedding notices, society news that mentions the people in my file, that sort of thing.

Apparently they've set it up so the user can either have a Master Source and individual child sources, as Ancestral Quest and Roots Magic and some other programs do, or to treat each individual page as a separate source, which is what I was doing with Family Historian in the past, for ease of attaching multimedia items to the sources.

I also tried importing a smallish GEDCOM from Family Historian into Clooz, just to see what would happen, and discovered that in the process all the sources were converted to Book-style sources. Not what I would have wanted. The import loads the names of people or sources into Clooz so you don't have to re-enter the names, but you don't get any of the Clooz functionality. So going 'backwards' from FH to Clooz is a bust.

[cloozjoe]

Hi jmurphy, I have joined the FHUG in order to try and address issues and concerns about Clooz. We are also available, almost 24/7, at our support function ( support@clooz.com ) for issues that might not be appropriate for general discussion.

We are specifically interested in the problem you mention about using a FH gedcom input to Clooz not providing desired source results. We would like to take a look at this issue, because the import "should" work properly. Would you mind making a test gedcom export from FH and forwarding it to us as an email attachment to our support address shown above? In your email, please state the exact results that you are seeing, and the results that you had expected.

As Colin mentioned, our new release next year will be much improved and have a gedcom export, as well. However, we feel that a direct interface, such as the terrific interface that Rich developed with Legacy would be preferable for our FH and Clooz users. As I'm sure you understand, in order to effect such a powerful interface, we always need the cooperation and support of the other program's development manager(s). Hopefully we can come to an agreement with FH.

As an interim measure (as Colin mentioned) the free version of Legacy can be used temporarily as the "middle man". I can assure you from my personal use of Clooz with Legacy that the export of data from Clooz is exceptional. As I mentioned in the HoA video, after implementation I opened blank files in each program, processed over 40 documents in Clooz, exporting them as I finished. The end result was a Legacy Family Tree file for which I had never typed a single character in Legacy itself. I really don't know anything about the supposed problems with the Legacy gedcom output, but as a temporary measure, it might prove worthwhile if you experimented a bit to determine if the results are acceptable to you.

No matter what the issue, since you already own Clooz, I strongly recommend that you continue processing your documents in Clooz while waiting for Clooz 4 later next year. That will insure that your database continues to build (especially for using the Composite View). As a dedicated Clooz user myself, long invested in FTM (they won't even discuss an interface) since version 1, IMHO the additional steps needed until Clooz 4 will prove worthwhile once a proper interface medium is available.

We really appreciate such discussions as this one. We are dedicated to continuing improvements, and have a stellar track record of listening to our users. Obviously we can't just snap our fingers and make everything happen, but as practicing genealogists ourselves, we are truly sensitive to user discussions, and try very hard to communicate, even when we have to report "bad news".

We are happy to continue to work with you and others to improve our genealogical environment. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

[cloozjoe]

I also want to address your use of Clooz for newspaper articles. I believe that with careful attention to how you enter identification data for each article, you can really build an exceptional database in Clooz. Plus the fact that the Composite View will provide virtual instant access to any individual mentioned in any and all articles (as well as any other documents) for careful review and analysis. A blog post I did some time ago titled "Follow-up Example of My File Naming System" may provide you some idea of the type of "index" that can be created.

http://clooz.com/SCRIPTFOLDER/admin.php ... Post&id=19

[makfai]

I have to say that I follow posts from jmurphy with interest as we seem to be in pursuit of the same Holy Grail of genealogy software. Unfortunately for me, while I like Clooz and GenQuiry, I need something which is compatible with my iPad.

My research as opposed to recording of data is done either on the move at the source repository or very static in the armchair! The recording of data is cut and dried - FH is my favourite - and this takes place at the desktop. So I need to find something which allows me to track the research before it is added to FH.

However, I will keep an eye on Clooz - over the shoulder of jmurphy!

[jmurphy]

Hi, Joe!

I really appreciate your taking the time to come here and join the discussion.

Part of the problem with learning to use Clooz is that I'm trying to learn too many things at once. I have the new features in Family Historian to play with, I have Clooz to learn, I have a couple of other programs I'm evaluating, and I'm trying to keep up with FHISO. So if I can't coherently describe what I'm struggling with at the moment, it isn't necessarily the fault of Clooz -- really it speaks more to my inability to focus.

What I would like to do is be able to enter the data for what I think RootsMagic would call a "Master Source" -- let's say, a particular newspaper title -- so I don't have to re-enter the data every time I create a citation enter an article from that particular newspaper. For most newspapers, I have a choice of a couple of vendors -- some are published online by NewsBank, so the articles will either come from News Library or Geneaology Bank. (NewsBank also has a separate site ObitsArchive, which I don't have a subsxcription to.) Others might come from Ancestry or Find My Past; as far as I can tell, both license that content from NewspaperArchive.

For the US Federal Census, there are many different possibilities -- I might have an image from Ancestry, FamilySearch, Find My Past, Heritage Quest -- you know how it is. Heritage Quest and Ancestry have different images, so it's worthwhile to treat them separately.

In my book-cataloging software, there are fields for the book I have in hand, and a separate tab for the original publication, so if I have a paperback and I also want to record the information for the original hardcover publication, I have separate, clearly defined areas to do that. But with a lot of genealogy software, it was designed for books, and there isn't as elegant a method to record source-of-source, as in, you accessed the digital images online with were a republication of a particular microfilm roll.

It does matter, because Elizabeth Shown Mills has demonstrated that Ancestry doesn't always present the images in the same order that they appear on the microfilm roll, and not all vendors give you all the information you need to do a good source citation anyway.

Sorry for the rant -- as I said, a lot of this isn't the fault of Clooz, it's just the half-assed way that a lot of the vendors cite their online 'publications'.

[jmurphy]

Just wanted to post a note that Joe has released a new version of Clooz which now will export to Family Historian. However, since I've been squandering huge amounts of time gathering more source material and taking webinars instead of actually entering any of my data, I still haven't learned Clooz properly or experimented with the new features.

Now that the 'webinar' season is winding down for the year, I'll have more time to experiment with Clooz. What I would like to do is store the data I have as a kind of mini One-Place Study for one of the towns I'm working in. Reconstructing the place is going to be a challenge in a rural community when so many people live in the Village without any street address -- but I'm hoping Clooz will help me make sense of all the electoral rolls.

[crobinson]

I am very happy to see some communication going on about Clooz on the FH site. I just downloaded FH (I am currently a FTM user) and found out yesterday about the discontinuation of FTM. I purchased Clooz a week or so ago and found it to be a very interesting program. Now if we can encourage the two companies to provide an auto sync between the two programs, I'll be a happy camper indeed!

FH looks to be an interesting program. I've looked at RootsMagic and Legacy, but I'm not really impressed yet. Hopefully FH will fulfill my needs!

[Valkrider]

The latest version of Clooz does interface with Family Historian and will access and write to the FH database.

[jmurphy]

I have upgraded Clooz, and I'm looking forward to trying out the new export to FH after the holiday period is over.

One of the things I haven't really worked out yet is whether I want to send information from Clooz to FH, or carry on as I was, using Ancestral Sources.

I often have information which I have collected, where I don't know which person it belongs to yet. I was hoping to use Clooz as a place to store this pre-conclusion material until I find out where it belongs.

So much software, so little time.

[Simonides]

So much software, so little time.

So true!

One of the things I haven't really worked out yet is whether I want to send information from Clooz to FH, or carry on as I was, using Ancestral Sources.

And what was the conclusion?

thanks,
Simonides (currently watching Clooz and AS webinars and wondering which way to jump!)

[jmurphy]

One of the things I haven't really worked out yet is whether I want to send information from Clooz to FH, or carry on as I was, using Ancestral Sources.

And what was the conclusion?

At the moment, I'm leaning strongly towards keeping each program separate, even if it means duplicate data entry.

However, some programs (like Evidentia) allow you to import a list of persons from your GEDCOM file for ease in tagging. If you already have a large number of people in Family Historian, it seems reasonable to allow Clooz or Evidentia to scrape your GEDCOM for a list of names and Identifiers to make it easier to keep track of what's what.

The problem with all the source-centric programs is that the everyday researcher who is not dong a One-Name Study or a One-Place Study usually does have a specific person in mind when they collect a record, otherwise they wouldn't have collected it in the first place. But it's hard to explain to them that just because they collected a record for John Smith, that doesn't mean the record belongs to the John Smith they are looking for, and they shouldn't make the conclusion ahead of their analysis.

Evidentia allows you to tag a source with multiple tags, so if you are analyzing a group of same-name people, you can keep track of what sources you looked at. So the same document might appear on the Proof Statement or Record of Research for two same-name people, along with your analysis proving it's one but not the other, or doesn't belong to either.