Personal Ancestral File 5.2

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Personal Ancestral File 5.2

• The Church of Jesus Christ
• of Latter-day Saints
• Valley Forge Family History Center

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How can I customize PAF?

• On the Preferences screen, you can customize how
  the program works.
• The Preferences screen is divided into several
  categories, each with its own tab.
• Click the tab to see the options on it.

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NOTES
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Notes, notes more notes

• You can have notes for each individual and
  marriage record in your file.
• Type notes in the same way as you would use a
  word processor. PAF 5 automatically wraps your
  text, so you do not need to press Enter unless
  you are ending a paragraph.

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Whats the difference between a note and a
source???Notes give additional information
about an individual and sources document where
you got the information.
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Example of notes

• Interesting or special circumstances of an
  individuals birth, death, or marriage.
• Stories
• Journal entries
• Your research notes and to do lists

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Guidelines for Notes

• Before you begin typing your notes, consider the
  following strategies
• Decide which notes you want to share with others
  and which you want to keep private.
• Make sure the notes will be understandable to
  another researcher. For example, when you refer
  to yourself, you may want to use your name rather
  than the words I or me.

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• If possible, type the information on the
  Individual screen and Marriage screen. Add
  custom events if the screens do not contain the
  fields that you need.
• Use the Sources feature for sources. Do not
  record source information in notes.

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Adding Notes

• Display the individual or marriage record.
• Click the Notes button. (It looks like a notepad
  with pencil.)
• Type your notes.
• Click Save.

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Shhhhhh...

• If you want to keep a note private and
  confidential begin a new line and type as the
  first character, then press Enter to end the note.

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SOURCES
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Examples of sources

• Citing sources means that you record where you
  found information about an individual. Examples
  of sources include birth certificates, censuses,
  church records, tombstones, family records and
  genealogies, and so forth.

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Advantages to sources

• When you use a source, you type most of the
  information once and use that source as many
  times as needed.

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Sources

• Display the individual or marriage record that
  you want to add a source to.
• Double-click the S that is located next to the
  field that you want to link a source to.
• Type the information requested on each field of
  the Source screen. When you are finished, click
  OK.

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Benefits of sources

• They allow you to evaluate the reliability of
  your information.
• They provide a history of the sources you have
  examined.
• They help you evaluate conflicting information.
• They acknowledge work done by others.

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Whats in a source???

• A source has three types of information
• Source description
• Citation
• Repository

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Source description

• This described the source as a whole. After you
  type it once, you need only select it from a list
  to cite it in another place in the .paf file.

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Citation

• This contains the information needed to find a
  particular piece of information within the
  source. For example, it might contain a page
  number of a book, or a page and line number of a
  census.
• The citation is attached to a specific indivitual
  record or marriage record.

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Repository

• This is the name, address and telephone number of
  the place, such as a library or archive, where
  you found the source.

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Typing source titles

• As you add source descriptions to your file, the
  titles appear on the Source List. As this list
  grows, it can be difficult to find the source you
  want.
• To help solve this challenge, you could use a
  standard for source titles.

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Published sources

• For published sources, such as books, magazines,
  articles, newspapers, compact discs and so forth,
  use the exact title.

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Unpublished sources

• Unpublished sources include birth certificates,
  parish registers, census records, journals,
  private collections of family records, etc.
• These sources have no official title, so you must
  type a descriptive title instead. Adopt a
  standard descriptive title and use it
  consistently.

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Descriptions by record type

• Census 1881 England
• Birth certificate North Dakota
• Interview Ashbey, Allen (2000)
• Personal knowledge Ashbey, Audrey
• Web site Ancestry.com
• Engraved umbrella handle Ashbey, Lewis W. (1876)

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Descriptions by Place

• England 1881 Census
• North Dakota Birth certificate
• Maine Interview of Ashbey, Allen (2000)
• Louisiana Ancestry.com website
• Mississippi personal knowledge of Audrey Ashbey

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Surname

• Ashbey, Andrew 1881 England Census
• Ashbey, Charles Birth certificate
• Ashbey, Gerald Personal interview (1998)
• Ashbey, Harold Personal knowledge
• Ashbey, Thomas Ancestry.com website
• Ashbey, William Engraved umbrella handle

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MULTIMEDIA
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Multimedia

• You can add pictures to source descriptions and
  citations, such as a scanned image of a birth
  certificate.
• If you want to print the picture, view it in a
  scrapbook or include it in a slideshow, add the
  picture to the individual and not to a source.

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Adding multimedia to an individual

• To add multimedia, open the Edit Individual
  screen and click on the Multimedia button (it
  looks like a camera).
• Add the item type (photo, sound clip or video
  clip) and use browse to indicate the location of
  the file.
• Click OK.

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Adding multimedia to a source

• To add an image to a source, open the Edit
  Individual screen, open the Source and click on
  the Image... button.
• Click on the Attach button, add the item type
  (photo, sound clip or video clip) and use browse
  to indicate the location of the file.
• Click OK.

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A Tickler File

• You can use a source as a tickler, to do or as
  a reminder.
• Begin the source description with ACTION and
  then add the location or action you want to
  remember.

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• When you are researching in that geographic
  location, print out a list of the ACTION sources
  for that location.

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Wow, no more little slips of paper!!!
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Silicone Valley PAF Users Group

• One good source for learning how to document
  sources is from the SVPAFUG.
• (Dont ask me how to pronounce that!!!!!)

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• Their website is www.svpafug.org and they offer a
  book entitled Family History Documentation
  Guidelines.

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Now focus your attention on this!!!
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Creating Focus Lists

• A focus list is a group of individuals who have
  something in common.
• For example, individuals who were born in the
  same place. If you printed this list, you could
  use it to search census records, parish records,
  and other records that contain information about
  individuals who lived in the same place.

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Advanced Focus/Filter

• From the Search menu, select Advanced
  Focus/Filter.

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Relationship Filters

• In the Advanced Focus/Filter feature, you can use
  two types of filters
• Relationship filters allow you to create a list
  with only the individuals, families, descendant
  lines, or ancestral lines you want.
• You can combine these filters in many different
  ways to suit your needs.

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Field Filters

• Field filters allow you to find individuals who
  have similar information in fields in the
  individual record, marriage record, notes, or
  sources.

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• For example, you are at a cemetery looking at a
  tombstone for Lillian May Ashbey. Her record is
  under her maiden name. What if you cant
  remember her maiden name???

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Thank you

• See you next week for GEDCOMs, Importing,
  Exporting Match/Merge