Storing Information

[John]

Lesley,
I'm going to atempt a short message. A statement which should confuse most people

Can anybody recomend a program capable of handling information from diverse sources, i.e. not births, marriages and deaths but information from title deeds, trade directories removal orders etc.
And, to store this material in a manner that allows it to be sorted and retrieved?

John

[Rod Neep]

It sounds like a task for software that stores "collections" of things. But whether or not there is one specifically for this type of thing, or where you can create your fields for your own type of data is a different matter.

Personally, I would use Microsoft Access. Fields can be set up for any type of data you want to store.... and queries and forms can be used to display them in a meaningful manner.

Try exploring the fact that you can link an object in a database to its source. e.g. click on the reference for the will, deed, photo, Word document, or whatever, and it just opens the relevant file from your hard disk.

So... with the database, not only can you have a powerful search tool, but it can be made to actually display the results for you. Hint - have a look at the sample database (Northwind) that comes with Access, and you can see that it can do some pretty wonderful things.

Rod

[John]

Yes, I had a look at http://www.sog.org.uk/cig/vol7/kay/
which seemed to fit my needs but I got bogged down with the thought of learning to work it all. Suppose I'm looking for something like that for idiots!

John

[Lesley Robertson]

Lesley,
I'm going to atempt a short message. A statement which should confuse most people

Can anybody recomend a program capable of handling information from diverse sources, i.e. not births, marriages and deaths but information from title deeds, trade directories removal orders etc.
And, to store this material in a manner that allows it to be sorted and retrieved?

John

Several people on the one place studies list have said that they like Custodian, but I haven't tried it. I've got everything in Works database files. I chose Works because it's a little simpler than many of the other databases around, and it did not throw a tantrum when I was converting HTML files to text files to comma separated text files for import from the Scots Origins index. Since I was adding the commas by hand, it was inevitable that I would miss a few and some files were enormous. With Works errors were relatively easy to fix.

[Geoffers]

[QUOTE=John]Lesley,
Can anybody recomend a program capable of handling information from diverse sources, i.e. not births, marriages and deaths but information from title deeds, trade directories removal orders etc. And, to store this material in a manner that allows it to be sorted and retrieved?]

I use Custodian for all records in my one-place study - registers, musters, tax returns, directories, service records - anything. it workds well.

Geoffers
Charlbury, Oxfordshire

[Lesley Robertson]

[QUOTE=Geoffers]

Lesley,
Can anybody recomend a program capable of handling information from diverse sources, i.e. not births, marriages and deaths but information from title deeds, trade directories removal orders etc. And, to store this material in a manner that allows it to be sorted and retrieved?]

I use Custodian for all records in my one-place study - registers, musters, tax returns, directories, service records - anything. it workds well.

Geoffers
Charlbury, Oxfordshire

How flexible are its search rountines? Can you search on any field at all - surname, occupation, cause of death - the full range?
It's getting more interesting every time someone mentions it....

[Geoffers]

You can search just about anything you want in anyway you desire using Custodian.

Click on 'Custodian 3' on the left of the screen and then 'screenshots' - which will help give you an idea of how it works and some of the search facilities'

Geoffers
Charlbury, Oxfordshire

[Al Jensen]

I would encourage you to give Legacy a good, hard look. Legacy is a powerful, flexible, and easy-to-use genealogy program, and the Standard version is available for free (the Deluxe version is also available, for a very modest price). It is based on the Access database, which makes it possible for you to add special fields, or to manipulate your data in any way you desire. It is unlikely that you will need to do so, however, since Legacy has the ability handle whatever 'events' in a person's life you may wish to enter, such as moves, occupations, military service, etc. The company is very responsive to the users, and they have a very active users group.

I worked for three years assisting patrons in the Family History Library with PAF, and I have used a number of other genealogy programs, but the only one I found that had the capabilities of Legacy was The Master Genealogist.
TMG, however, has a very steep learning curve, and is not very user friendly.

No, I am not a sales rep for Legacy, just a very happy user!!

Al Jensen

[Lindad]

Access is great. It is relatively simple to use and enables you to manipulate (in a good way) a lot of information.

[John]

One of the FH magazines had a shareware copy of Custodian II as a give away recently. It convinced me that Custodian Three will do what I need. It doesn't appear to be cheap but it is well documented and fairly straight forward (idiot proof) to use.


John