I must be a glutton for punishment. I had so much fun stress over the weekend trying out Roots Magic 7’s source citations that I decided I might as well try out the format in Ancestral Quest 14. Guess it’s a good thing that the computer didn’t go out the window!

I’d like to take a moment to thank Lois Willis for her post on using the RootsMagic 7 templates to cite sources, Nichelle Barra for her commentary and offer to answer any other questions and Randy Seaver for the lengthy reply, all of which greatly reduced my frustrations!

DISCLAIMER: My Ancestral Quest 14 program was a complimentary gift from Gaylon Findlay, President of Incline Software with no strings attached and no promises made. My views and comments are strictly my own.

Please remember that this is not a straight forward “how to.” I am sharing my stumbling around trying to figure out how to use the programs on my short list of replacements for FTM. For the same reason, this isn’t a recommendation to buy or not to buy. Part of my non-tech criteria to judge is how far I can get without pulling out my hair. 🙂

I opened up AQ 14 and went to the NAME LIST, figuring I would stick with Richard Belden. His information was more than fresh in my mind after Sunday’s go-around using RM 7’s Master Source List. After scrolling the tabs at the top of the page, I found the EDIT tab included Notes/Sources, so I started with that.

Edit Notes/Sources

I took a quick look at the Notes/Sources box yesterday in my first post, but didn’t work on adding and citing a source. Today, I am going to add a link to “The English Ancestry of Richard Belden of Wethersfield, Connecticut,” published in The New England Historical and Genealogical Register (NEHGR) in January 2001. It was written by Paul C. Reed and John C.G. Sharp. Part 1 of this article was on pages 20-28. I clicked on Notes/Sources and this box opened:

Notes/Sources

I tried the different tabs at the top and, while I could type notes into these boxes, there was no link to source citations, so I closed this up and went back to the EDIT tab and tried the Scrapbook collection interface.

This choice allowed me to ADD. In the top menu box, I changed PHOTO to DOCUMENT,  browsed for the file in the computer and then entered the appropriate details in for this journal article:

Describing a Journal Article

OOOPS!  I figured I must be missing something because this didn’t cite the source, so I went back to the menu choices. NOTES/SOURCES, I think, should only be labeled “NOTES,” so as to not confuse the meaning of the term SOURCE. My second venture brought me to the EDIT tab, but the fourth choice in the drop down menu is SOURCE LIST.

Edit Source List

When I clicked to open this tab, a box appeared that looks very much like the Master Source List in RootsMagic. Maybe it was a good thing, after all, that I waded through RM 7 over the weekend. This format is now a bit more in my comfort zone. I checked this list and there is no JOURNAL ARTICLE, PRINT, which is how I would classify it.

I shared my RootsMagic plight with Randy Seaver, who writes because I know he uses that program regularly. He shared one tip about naming items for a Source List that I think is a great tip for any program. He starts with the family surname. That means that if there are 25 different sources for BELDEN family information, those sources will be grouped together in a master list, regardless of the software program being used.

Being able to search sources for one family in the same small section of a master list is an idea I love. For source type, ARTICLE was in the list so I chose that. However, instead of just entering the article title, I am going to call it” BELDEN, The English Ancestry of Richard Belden of Wethersfield, Connecticut” instead. Because I lose the Belden surname very early in my family tree, I won’t have a lot of fact sources, but I do want my naming method to be consistent. This will be very handy when I get to Stufflebean sources!

Article citation information entered

The new source list put this article in the B section because I inserted the surname before the article title.

BELDEN “The English Ancestry of Richard Belden. . .”

Now, I need to go back and make sure it gets linked to Richard Belden, the immigrant ancestor. I repeated the process I described at the beginning of this post and found Richard in the Name list, clicked and opened the Notes/Sources box once again. This time, I clicked on the INDIVIDUAL SOURCES tab, which allowed me to ADD.

Richard Belden’s baptism was actually before the start of his church parish register, but for simplicity’s sake, I chose BIRTH as the fact to demonstrate. I clicked CONTINUE and was able to retrieve the article and choose SELECT.

Yet another box opened to allow me to add further citation details.

Additional Citation Details

There is an interesting box, where the text can apparently be added. Since this article is in PDF format, I am not going to enter any text. I was also curious about the ATTACH button to the right of the empty white boxes. I clicked on it too see what would happen. It brought me back to the Scrapbook feature, where I clicked on the article and it put a link in the large gray box between the white boxes and the ATTACH button.

If I click on the gray box, the PDF opens.

It looks like there is quite a bit more to investigate here, based on the other tabs at the bottom of this box.

However, my brain is awash in too many details just with this, so I will end here. I am seeing comparisons in methods of both RootsMagic 7 and Ancestral Quest 14 in terms of these source citations. I still don’t know whether I can commit to using these templates, but I am giving this my best go. Hope you’ve learned something here, too.