* Source Splitting for Electoral Roll

[PhilipR]

Good afternoon

Up until now I have been a "Lumper" concerning Sources and Citations. Currently I have one Source "Australian Electoral Roll" with over 430 Citations attached.

I would now like to have a Source for each year the Electoral Rolls are published and the Citations for that years Rolls attached. Usually Electoral Rolls are issued every two to four years.

I know how to produce a Source for every issue of the Roll but am unsure as to linking the Citations to the date of issue.

How would I go about making these alterations?

I hope someone can assist.

Philip

[tatewise]

The challenge is to identify which Citations are associated with each year.
If you have consistently recorded the year in the same way in every Citation then it should be feasible to select those for one year and link them to your new Source for that year. However, that is not a straightforward process and would need a custom plugin to automate.

We need details of the format of your data in the Source Citations to be able to provide more explicit advice.

There is a Lumped Source Splitter plugin that completely converts a lumped source into fully split sources.
In this case that would probably produce a separate Source record for each household.
Lumping them back together for each year would also need a custom plugin.

That Lumped Source Splitter plugin might be able to be adapted to convert your current lumping to the desired year lumping strategy.

[LornaCraig]

I have moved this topic from the Media forum to the Sources, Ctations & Repositories forum where it seems more appropriate.

[Mark1834]

Probably not the Lumped Source Splitter here, as that creates new split sources and combines duplicate citations, which is much more processing than we need here.

As the new year-specific sources are also lumped, the task essentially is to move a citation from one lumped source to another, with no basic changes to the project structure.

Providing that there is a consistent way of identifying the year, either in the Where Within or Note fields or Text from Source (or even the date of the Residence fact providing that residence date and source date match in all cases), it should be possible for a plugin to create a citation to the new year-specific source, copy all the details from the original citation, then delete the original.

If your Electoral Roll source is only used to support Residence facts, that is a significantly simpler task than it would be for a typical census, which could support multiple additional facts such as birth and occupation.

I don't have time for any new custom plugins at the moment, but it sounds like something Mike might explore further.

[tatewise]

Yes, that is essentially what I said. Without a lot more detail we cannot help much.

[Mark1834]

Indeed - just pointing Philip to exactly what is needed. Might as well get the details in now - two-way dialogue UK to Tasmania can be a little slow as we’re not often awake at the same time!

[PhilipR]

The challenge is to identify which Citations are associated with each year.
If you have consistently recorded the year in the same way in every Citation then it should be feasible to select those for one year and link them to your new Source for that year. However, that is not a straightforward process and would need a custom plugin to automate.

We need details of the format of your data in the Source Citations to be able to provide more explicit advice.

There is a Lumped Source Splitter plugin that completely converts a lumped source into fully split sources.
In this case that would probably produce a separate Source record for each household.
Lumping them back together for each year would also need a custom plugin.

That Lumped Source Splitter plugin might be able to be adapted to convert your current lumping to the desired year lumping strategy.

Hi Mike

Thanks for your response.

I can easily identify the 450 citations that I have attached to my one source. I have attached a screenshot of one of my Sources and Citations. I use Electoral information for the address and occupation of a particular person. I guess it is not necessary to use a citation for occupations if that makes the splitting of the citations any easier.

Hope you can assist

Philip

[PhilipR]

Indeed - just pointing Philip to exactly what is needed. Might as well get the details in now - two-way dialogue UK to Tasmania can be a little slow as we’re not often awake at the same time!

Hi Mark

it is a real communication problem being so far away.

I can identify my citations by years which could make my problem easier to solve. I have attached a screenshot of my latest Source/Citation entry which may assist. Currently I use the from Electoral Rolls to track Address and Occupations of a particular. I do not have to use Citation for occupations if that is easier.

Hope you can assist

Philip

[Mark1834]

Thanks Phil - they look nicely structured if Mike wants to pursue the plugin route. One general question, as he doesn’t normally login until mid-morning UK time - I’m not familiar with Australian electoral rolls, so how do you use them for occupation? It makes no difference to any plugin, just curious.

[Woodg]

Thanks Phil - they look nicely structured if Mike wants to pursue the plugin route. One general question, as he doesn’t normally login until mid-morning UK time - I’m not familiar with Australian electoral rolls, so how do you use them for occupation? It makes no difference to any plugin, just curious.

Excuse me for butting in. Phil will surely respond, but I can provide some details.

Australian Electoral Rolls contain Name, Address and Gender. They used to contain Occupation, but that was no longer recorded after 1983.

[tatewise]

If the Citation-specific Date field always provides the year then I should be able to produce a custom plugin.
I propose to append the year to the Source Title and Short Title of the new Source records. Is that satisfactory?
e.g.
Title: Australian Electoral Roll 1963
Short Title: Electoral Roll - Australia 1963

[tatewise]

To keep things moving try the attached prototype Split Citations by Year plugin Version 0.1 Date 17 Nov 2023.

When you run the plugin it will prompt for the Australian Electoral Roll source record.

As stated earlier, it relies on the Citation Date field providing the Year on which to split.
If there is no such Year then the Citation remains linked to the original Source record.
Apart from linking them to the new Source records, no other Citation changes are made.

The new Source records will have the Year appended to their Title and Short Title.
Otherwise, the fields will be identical to the original lumped Source record.

After running the plugin review the changes including the new Source field values.

If anything is unsatisfactory, use Edit > Undo Plugiun Updates immediately before closing FH.

Let me know what needs changing as there is bound to be something we have not thought about.

[PhilipR]

Thanks Phil - they look nicely structured if Mike wants to pursue the plugin route. One general question, as he doesn’t normally login until mid-morning UK time - I’m not familiar with Australian electoral rolls, so how do you use them for occupation? It makes no difference to any plugin, just curious.

Excuse me for butting in. Phil will surely respond, but I can provide some details.

Australian Electoral Rolls contain Name, Address and Gender. They used to contain Occupation, but that was no longer recorded after 1983.

It looks like Woodg has beaten me to it but he is correct although I did not know that they ceased occupations from 1983. For your information I have attached a screenshot from a page of an Electoral Roll.

Philip

[PhilipR]

Thanks Mike

Pease confirm that I need to establish the relevant Source Records prior to downloading the plug-in?

Philip

[tatewise]

No, don't create anything because the plugin would not know how to find those new Sources.
The plugin will create the required Sources as duplicates of the original and then append the Year to the Title and Short Title. That way it knows how to relink the Citations.

If you want the new Sources to be modified in some other way then let me know and the plugin can probably be changed to do that. If it cannot then you will have to modify the new Sources by hand, but that is little more work than creating them from scratch.

Currently, the plugin leaves the Citation linked to the original Source if there is no Citation-specific entry Date.
I've realised that if that arises the plugin can use the Date of the associated Fact. Is that likely to be necessary?

[PhilipR]

Thanks Mike

I will download this Plug-In and see how things go.

I will let you know the outcome..
Philip

[PhilipR]

I would like to confirm the procedure for using your Plugin. I can't find an item regarding this subject in the Knowledge Base:

1. Backup FH
2. Load FH
3. Load Plugin - I presume the plugin loads to FH?
4. Follow the instructions in the plugin.
5. Ensure that Splitting has been processed correctly - otherwise use the Edit/Undo Plugin Updates.

Pease confirm that I am on the right track.

Thanks
Philip

[tatewise]

I would be interested to know what you search for in the Knowledge Base without success.

See FHUG KB Backup and Recovery that explains the backup and restore options.
You should not need to use those features in this case because Edit > Undo Plugin Updates will restore the original state before running the plugin and so will the File > Backup/Restore > Revert to Snapshot... command.

See FHUG KB Family Historian Plugins and also follow the Help file (v7) link for the Plugin Window.
In this case, you will download the earlier attachment and if it does not automatically install then double-click the downloaded file to install the plugin.

[PhilipR]

Thanks Mike

I will download this Plug-In and see how things go.

I will let you know the outcome..
Philip

Hi Mike

The Plug-In worked very well. The result was just what I wanted.

Thanks
Philip