Record Linking Labs 5-A-Day Project Tips
I have been working these every day and finding it a very worthwhile project!
I’ve found a way that works for me to put the family together in a most complete manner. Some days it might take but 5 minutes to get through the five families and on other days I might spend an hour or two cleaning up the family. I may be doing more that necessary, but I’d prefer to clean up the tree.
As I work each member of the family I add the sources. Then I go back to the beginning of the family and review each member again. Often I find that by adding the sources for each person, new sources appear for one or more members of the family unit. Then I add those sources snd take one more pass at each one. I often find potential duplicates and work those. Putting the duplicates together can also trigger new potential sources, so I make another pass looking for those sources.
Then I go back and check each person’s vitals and work any non-standard places.
If someone is missing a vital record I search FS Records for a record that the program missed. If necessary, I might even check Ancestry records for that vital and add that information.
This project has been extremely worthwhile. 😊
Answers
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@Sue Maxwell that's good news!
Would you be able to provide some feedback on the workings of the hint emails for those who have been discussing the RLL's tools etc. on this thread:
The relevant point we made to BYU was (pasted for convenience as it's a very long thread):
'Failure to take current FT information into account'Those using the Power Linker, Source Linker via BYU RLL hint emails, etc., don’t necessarily understand the impact a resulting change would have on the FT before they make or approve it:
'Just because a match looks great in the Power Linker (or indeed the Source Linker) does not mean that there is no contra-indication somewhere else in the FT profile's data, in its Research Helps (or Data Quality Score guidance), or in an alert.
'Starting from a BYU RLL-chosen candidate match will always mean that the user has had no chance to judge whether this is the
best match availableto existing FT data.'Your input on this, as someone who is clearly using the hints with considerable care, would be really valuable.
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Fixing the data in the FSFT will always be a challenge, but I think it needs a change of mindset. So many people only take a look to see if their particular ancestor is in the tree and then complain because “it’s wrong”. It is really about building families, not necessarily about any one individual.So I look at these “clues” and “hints” as a missing piece of the family puzzle. One piece can be all it takes to begin painting a picture of a family. That’s why I like them so much. That puzzle piece brings awareness to the family to start. Then it’s a matter of determining what pieces are already in the tree and what this new piece can add.
We all know that the algorithm’s used to find hints can only do so much alone. So cleaning up a place name for instance, can be the missing piece to form the picture of the family. That’s why I “loop” through the family several times. Every time I standardize another place name used within the family, the algorithm gets better and finds more hints. So I look at each member within the family, even if it’s just a husband and wife, and fix those items. As I go through the children and then back to the parents again, new information starts to form. Sometimes this is all it takes for FS sources to begin to populate.
FS doesn’t have all the sources so I may do a quick search in Ancestry, looking for a more accurate date or location. Then I fix that in the tree and in a matter of a few minutes more children are found and added to the family. That one clue from a project like the 5-A-Day Record Linking, or the Verify Places, etc, can make all the difference in cleaning up the tree.
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Mandy Shaw, one more thing. I don’t ever discount what might appear to be a duplicate hint. Every hint has something in it that the other does not. Just because the title is the same or similar does not mean the data it contains is the same. Even transcriptions from two different census records can have “different” clues.
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Thank you very much for your detailed insight @Sue Maxwell.
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