Thursday, May 26, 2011

Event-based history and genealogy software for family historians, biographers and others

If you are looking for a lineage-linked genealogy program to keep your family tree and show all your relations, there is a wide choice available. Some, like Legacy and Personal Ancestal File (PAF) are free, others are shareware, and others you have to pay for up front. They all do much the same thing -- they allow you to enter people who are related to one another and show the relationships between them.

What they are not so good for, however, are collecting information about people who you think might be related, but aren't sure of. Lineage linked programs are fairly narrowly genealogical. Family historians often have wider interests, however, and sometimes it is important to show other people who influenced a family -- people like business partners, close friends, bosses and so on. These people are related, though the relationship is not genealogical.

So I think there is a real need for an event-based program to be used as a research tool, not only for genealogists and family historians, but also for general historians, biographers and others. It would differ from lineage-linked genealogy programs in that it would not only include people that were relatives, but friends and acquaintaces, work colleagues, and even enemies. It would be a useful tool for a biographer trying to keep track of the events in the life of their subject, or for someone writing general history as well. It could even be used by detectives tracing the activities of a suspect, or the sequence of events relating to a particular crime or series of crimes.

The main part of the database would be a chronological list of events, with links to people and organisations assocated with these events. The organisations could be both formal and informal groups — a political party, church, club, school, hospital, business firm, trade union, family or any other human group.

The basic outline of the program would look something like this:

The “people” part would not only be for family members, as one finds in lineage-linked genealogy programs, but for non-related people, like friends, work colleagues, teachers, pupils, godparents, acquaintances and so on. Perhaps it could also be useful in testing theories of six degrees of relationship — that we are only six degrees of relationship away from knowing everyone else on earth, and that my wife’s boss’s godmother’s cousin’s penfriend’s vet knows me.

A biographer could use it as a research tool for keeping track of the events in the life of the subject. One kind of early record might be a baptism record, for example. The baptism would be the event, and would link to people who were known to be present -- parents, godparents, and the church minister performing the ceremony, but others who were present as well. The godparents might or might not be genealogically related to the person being baptised, but would be recorded anyway. As information is added to the database, the relationship and influence of that person on the subject can be followed.

It could also be used by fiction writers for keeping track of events and characters in a novel.

A historian using such a program could use it for tracing the history of an organisation and its leaders, and chronologically arranging events in the life of the organisation, with information about the people involved in each event. A literary historian could use it to trace the interrelationships of a school of writers.

I've discussed this with various people, including Dennis Allsopp, the author of two genealogical note-taking and source-recording programs, Genota and Genforms. But this is not quite the same thing as a note-taking program. A note-taking program is for recording evidence rather than conclusions. A lineage-linked program is for recording conclusions (you have concluded that the people you have linked are related) and the evidence that supports those conclusions.

This program would be a research tool for recording both evidence and conclusions. It could be used by genealogist in conjunction with a lineage-linked genealogy program and a note-taking program. It could be used by biographers and historians on its own, or with a note-taking program. It would enable the user to link various pieces of evidence to show relationships between them and suggest conclusions.

My problem is that though I have a fairly good idea of what I want, I'm not a programming fundi, and can't write such a program myself. What it really needs is a group of programmers and researchers who could discuss their research needs, and produce a program that meets those needs.

If you are reading this and feel the need for such a program, there is a forum for discussing it, which you are welcome to join. I've also posted a skeleton of tables in MS Access based on the model above, which you can download to experiment with and comment on.

8 comments:

Unknown said...

Have you looked at The Master Genealogist program? Although probably not precisely what you're looking for it, it is more of an event-based genealogy program than most of the others, and you can add as many and whatever kind of "witnesses" to each individual as you need. Downside: it has a very high learning curve. Another downside: it's not free. Check out the website www.whollygenes.com. (And, no, although I have used it for a number of years, I am NOT employee of Wholly Genes :-)

CherieB

Steve Hayes said...

Yes, I have a copy of TMG, but I stopped using it because it kept crashing. But apart from that, it's not really what I have in mind here, which is software to record events in the life of organisations as well as people.

The aim is to be able to record the history of a school, a business, a church, a trade union or a Boy Scout troop, as well as the biography of an individual.

Anonymous said...

Have you tried the gramps-project.org?

You can add unrelated persons to events. I'm not familiar with the latest incarnation, but presumably you could represent an organisation as an individual in the software. Create events for said organisation and then link all the relevant individuals and create personal events and biographies for each one of them.

Nan Bailey said...

I found the link to this blog post today through your comment in the Legacy discussion group and I think it is an excellent idea that has numerous uses. I am not quite ready for it myself, but I would use such a program in the future. I hope you had some interest in your proposal. Nan Bailey, Australia.

Steve Hayes said...

At last it looks as though someone may be developing a program like that described in this post. Dennis Allsopp of AusGen is working on it right now, and it is hoped that it may soon be available.

Unknown said...

The next tool in the Genota line with the working title of Genota Research Companion is currently in beta and I aim to have it ready for release in April 2017. It is as Steve & I discussed some 7 years ago, an Event based research tool which allows for multiple people, sources, locations, and documents (images, files, etc) to be attached to each event. Also is the capability to view the data from the perspective of a person, location or source. A gedcom import facility has been included to enable priming the data file from lineage-linked packages. More information will be made available soon at www.genota.com.

Jean Price said...

When I first read your comments in the Legacy Group on Monday 20 March 2017, I thought you were referring to Louis Kessler and his programme "Behold". The url is
http://www.beholdgenealogy.com/blog/.
I am looking forward to an event based programme.
Regards
Jean Price
New Zealand

Steve Hayes said...

I couldn't work out what "Behold" was or what it was supposed to do.

The Geneota Research Companion is developing along the lines of an event-based program as described above, though it is still being beta tested, and having a few wrinkles being ironed out.