Skip to content
New issue

Have a question about this project? Sign up for a free GitHub account to open an issue and contact its maintainers and the community.

By clicking “Sign up for GitHub”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy statement. We’ll occasionally send you account related emails.

Already on GitHub? Sign in to your account

Add tech faq discussion about source URLs #177

Merged
merged 3 commits into from
May 30, 2024
Merged
Changes from 1 commit
Commits
File filter

Filter by extension

Filter by extension

Conversations
Failed to load comments.
Loading
Jump to
Jump to file
Failed to load files.
Loading
Diff view
Diff view
47 changes: 47 additions & 0 deletions _pages/techfaqs.md
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -334,3 +334,50 @@ unknown parties.
Relative paths, however, are permitted in both GEDCOM and GEDZIP files and so may be more convenient to
use in both cases. Any tool that converts FamilySearch GEDCOM 7.0 to GEDZIP should convert local file URLs
to relative paths within the resulting GEDZIP file.

# How do I record the URL of a source?

While `EVENT_DETAIL` and `REPOSITORY_RECORD` both allow a URL to be placed in a `WWW` substructure,
`SOURCE_CITATION`, `SOURCE_RECORD`, and `SOURCE_REPOSITORY_CITATION` do not.

Some applications might put the source URL for an `EVENT_DETAIL` in a `WWW` substructure
in parallel to a `SOURCE_CITATION` as follows:

```
1 DEAT
2 DATE 14 DEC 1799
2 WWW https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/1075
2 SOUR @FindAGraveSourceRecord@
3 PAGE Memorial: 1075
```
Copy link
Collaborator

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

The reason will be displayed to describe this comment to others. Learn more.

I would prefer we remove this example as it is misleading, possibly even incorrect.

Many events in the last 20 years have URLs for the event itself, containing an invitation, registry, photo album, etc. Many within the last 10 years have a URL as their only location: the online meeting address. These are worth recording as they convey something about the event itself (how it was held) and can sometimes be used to look up sources in web archive repositories (like archive.org and many others). These are separate from the URL of sources: a wayback machine URL is not the URL of the event, it is the URL of the record in the Internet Archive, and both might be separate from the URL of a separately-created record in an online or in-person archive or database.

dthaler marked this conversation as resolved.
Show resolved Hide resolved

However, since there can be multiple source citations per event, this does not allow associating the URL
with a specific source citation. Instead, the URL can be placed in the `PAGE` structure. For example:

```
1 DEAT
2 DATE 14 DEC 1799
2 SOUR @FindAGraveSourceRecord@
3 PAGE Memorial: 1075, URL: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/1075
```

Similarly, some applications might put the source URL for a `SOURCE_RECORD` in a `PUBL` substructure
as follows:

```
0 @S1@ SOUR
1 TITL Grave of George Washington
1 PUBL https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/1075
```

while others might put it in the `CALN` of a `SOURCE_REPOSITORY_CITATION` as follows:

```
0 @S1@ SOUR
1 TITL Grave of George Washington
1 REPO @FindAGraveRepositoryRecord@
2 CALN https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/1075
```

Note that unlike the `PAGE` structure, the `CALN` structure has no current recommendation about using
label: value pairs.
Loading