* Convert citation note to source note?

[MFriend]

Hi Folks:
This question is a little different than my previous citation question.

Background:
The Lumped Source Splitter was run on the file so all sources are unique.

Most of the sources have a citations note section with a url such as:

citationnote.png (33.58 KiB) Viewed 362 times

All of the sources have only one (unique to them) citation note.

My question is: is it possible to convert the citation note to a source note? Or Copy it? (best case would be a conversion or a copy to a new source note and delete of the old citation note).

The reason I want to do this:
I am in the process of merging thousands of sources (for example say x3 different 1880 census records). FH 7 does great at merging the sources. The differences in citations notes though cause the same x3 1880 census records (now with the same record number) to still be displayed x3 times. The "Find Duplicate Citations" plugin won't get rid of them of course because the citations are different. If the citation notes were converted to source notes, then the x3 links on a fact would be easily merged into displaying one only. I hope that makes sense....

Matthew

[tatewise]

The only way to achieve that is with a custom plugin that moves each Citation-specific Note to its linked Source record Note. It will have to avoid duplicating the same URL in the Source record Note and also allow for multiple different URL.

Alternatively, the Source records could be redefined to include one or more URL templated fields that would be better for supporting URL, i.e. they allow the URL to be clickable links.

[Mark1834]

The original version of the plugin actually did exactly what you want - it included the Citation Note in determining equivalence, and moved all the identical notes to being a Source Note.

I changed it in later versions to give a stricter separation between the actual citation content (Text from Source, Media, etc) and information about the citation (Note, Quality assessment, etc).

It might be possible to make that a user option in the next version, but it would only work correctly if all citations had the same note, otherwise it would create multiple copies of the source, each with a different note.

I'll think about how practical that might be, but it won't be for a while as I'm busy with other things at the moment.

[MFriend]

Hi Mike

Thanks for the input on this. Part of my process is already taken care of by some of your other plugins:

First I used your plugin to convert all the citation note URLs to be clickable already using your plugin (Move Note URL to Rich Text Weblink).

I also use your plugin (maybe it never made it to the store. The version I have is 0.1) that removes duplicate URLs (called "Find Duplicate Weblinks" from 31 May 2022). I have found that it does great at removing duplicate weblinks whether the note type is citation or source so it works great (as a test I copied the linked url from the citation note field to x3 different source notes and put dupes in all of them. All the dupes from within the specific note were removed correctly).

If I end up with more than one note file with links that is perfectly fine.

I wonder if Mark's Lumped source splitter could be modified to also copy the citation note to a source note since it already copies the other fields to a source record when splitting? I tried looking at the code but it just confuses me lol.

Matthew

[MFriend]

Hi Mark:
Sorry, I guess I was typing and thinking at the same time you were posting.

Yes each source only has exactly one citation note.

It's not a hurry. This is the same file from my brother that I'm waiting on to do a final import from FTM to FH 7 because there currently with 7.0.22 is a bug with the places/descriptions being lost during import so I won't be finalizing anything till the bug is fixed.

Only once I would do that final import, then I'd run the splitter.

Matthew

[tatewise]

Yes each source only has exactly one citation note.

So are you saying that each Source record only has one Citation?
i.e. When you look at the Source record in the Records Window Sources tab its Links column value is 1.
If that is true then there is only one instance of a Citation-specific Note to move to the Source Note and thus no duplicates are possible.

[MFriend]

Yes that is correct Mike, there is only one citation.

What happens then is when I merge the sources ( the example I gave before was x3 1880 census, but I have thousands), the source ends up with the same record number, but there will be x3 copies on a fact for instance because the citation notes differ. If I could changed the citation note to a source note immediately after being split with the lumper splitter plugin (or as part of that process) and before beginning the merging process, then the citation notes (which would be empty and )would just be source notes (and so would only be listed one time for a fact and also would be easier to inspect / work with during the source record merge process. I hope that makes sense. So singular source record number and multiple citation notes only happens after the merge of the source records.

Example:
Standard Source after splitting:

1 - source after splitting.png (57.9 KiB) Viewed 294 times

The same individual has x6 versions of the 1900 census (with different record numbers).

2 - multiple 1900 census sources for same individual.png (20.54 KiB) Viewed 294 times

After merging the sources for the 1900 census the merged source is shone, but with multiple links to the fact since there are multiple citation notes with different URLs in them.

3 - after merging sources.png (7.88 KiB) Viewed 294 times

If the citation note were converted to a source note before the merging process, then I could choose keep or reject the source note.

As far as duplications the plugin to remove web link duplications gets rid of most, but it would be a quick matter to quickly look at and delete duplicate source notes.

[Mark1834]

Thinking about this scenario in more detail, I think there is an unavoidable difference between how lumpers (which FTM forces you to be) and splitters record this type of note. Lumpers have to put it in the citation, as there is nowhere else for it to go. Splitters create a separate source for each use of the "master" source, so put a note that relates to their split source, such as a URL, in the source.

This means that if the plugin includes the citation note in determining equivalence, it creates superfluous additional sources that differ only by the note. If it excludes them, it copies the note to every citation to that source, which is not incorrect, but untidy and not how it would be set up from scratch.

I would be interested to see how including the note in the split affects the situation reported here. Version 1.3 of the plugin was the latest one that worked this way, and it can be downloaded from this link if you want to experiment with it.

[tatewise]

Matthew, you are mistaken about why there are multiple Citations after merging the Source records.
Merging the Source records does NOT ever merge the Citations that link to the Source records.
So even if all the Citation-specific Notes are empty there will still be multiple Citations after the Merge.
( I have just tested that process with entirely empty duplicate Citations. )

The "Find Duplicate Citations" plugin does NOT check the Citation-specific fields.
So it will delete the duplicates even when any Citation-specific Note fields contain a URL.
( I have just tested the plugin on multiple Citations with various different field values. )

So what matters is whether you need to retain any of those URL and which ones (if any) need to be moved to the Source record.

[MFriend]

Thank you very much Mark and Mike for your help.

Mark: I tried your old version (which I have saved a copy of now) and it worked perfect for what I wanted.
Mike: Your right, the "Find Duplicate Citations" would have ended up with my losing the different URLs.

I think this older plugin fixes my issue. Now I just have a few hundred folks to go through using the "Sources for a Given Record" query and merge the appropriate ones once FH has the FTM import bug fixed. Since the links are in the source it will be super easy to merge:

merge_sources.png (23.81 KiB) Viewed 190 times

FH is so nice because I can keep the different links, and media.

Matthew

merge_2.png (52.49 KiB) Viewed 188 times

This will work great.

I had thought about trying to do the merges in FTM before importing int FH, but FTM does not do merging of sources but only replacing. So while it is possible to keep the links between sources and citations, the various media and other details are lost (since only the media attached to the source being kept are saved). Anyways, with FH I'm not kidding it will take 25% of the time as with FTM and I'll get much better results I think

I think I'm good, now, thanks again , You both are awesome

Matthew