DBSIG: German Pork Butchers

[Berlin-Bob]

Histres sent me a link to a house lexicon he has contributed to.
http://www.schwaebischhall.de/buergerstadt/geschichte/haeuserlexikon/gebaeudeverzeichnis.html

It is in german, but that's not an issue, as he only sent it as an idea for the format of a database.

I'm adding it here so we can include these ideas in our discussion.

regards,
Bob

[RichardFunk]

I see the RootsChat system seems to do what I had envisaged. It would probably be simpler to use your system than set up a seperate one. Do we use the base in the link you posted but add in the other categories? Would it be that particular search interface with other categories added or would there be a special link to a seperate searchable database for pork butchers? I ask because a few people have had difficulty using it and if pork butchers are sharing the same interface with all searches it may lead to lots of categories that are unnecessary for other searches, for say cork cutters, who may not need "Origin Point" or "First Recorded in Britain" as a category. Hope you understand my meaning in that, it's a bit difficult to explain.

I agree that some of the fields I have specified could be split and made more specific, the places where they settled could also be split in counties, so we could bring up a list of all the pork butchers in Lancashire for instance. I also agree that we should add a contributor column.

As for format, my list is currently in a text based format (MS Word) in a column.

Just to clarify the way information is contributed. The person that enters the information, say I enter my great grandfather George Funk, and put in his details, is the only one who can edit it? What if, say, my cousin is looking and finds that George is only his English name and his real name is Johann Georg Michael and wants to change it. Would my cousin be able to do that? Or more simply if I left the "Address(es)" category blank, could someone else fill it in?

[RichardFunk]

Just remembered a site that I like:

http://www.sheffieldindexers.com/DirectoriesIndex.html

It has multiple searchable fields and is simple. This is the sort of thing I have in mind. It also has the option to use other databases - directories, burials, baptisms, etc. This maybe illustrates my previous question better. There are different searchable fields on the interface for different databases, for example "Cemetery" is on burials, but isn't necessary for directories. Can RootsChat change the search interface for pork butchers, and if more databases of this type are set up for them? As I said cork cutters probably won't need the same categories as pork butchers and vice versa.

[Berlin-Bob]

Hi Richard,

I was just thinking through a few ideas while you were posting, so I'll reply straight away

As the SIT is Surname-orientated, I think a separate database, with entry and search facilities similar to the SIT, would be better than extending the SIT to cope with all the extra information needed for a person-orientated database.

For contributions I can think of the following possibilities (there are probably more):

• the contributor enters the data in an online form (as in the SIT)
• Contributions could also be sent as an excel or word file, which I could then enter in the database directly per SQL

That is a good question, "who is allowed to edit data ?" My original idea was to say only the original contributor. I don't know how we could track people editing entries otherwise. We could try leaving it open for all members to edit, but I feel it may be safer to limit it to the original contributor. Perhaps in such  cases as you mentioned, anyone with corrections (not necessarily a relative) could contact the contributor (the name would be the profile link) and inform him there.

We can decide later if a more open access method would be better.

By the way, your question brings up another question - should we supply columns for "original" and "anglicised" surnames and forenames ??

regards,
Bob

ps. just seen your latest post.  I'll go and look at it now

[Berlin-Bob]

Just thinking out loud .....

I've made up a small excel table just to visualise some possibilities.  You'll all have to imagine them as web tables in a browser ...

If we add all the data we can think of we could end up with a table looking something like the first attachment.  This would be too wide to look at without scrolling, so I suggest a smaller table to show search results and then click on any name for more info, as in the second attachment.

Opinions ?

[RichardFunk]

I've attached an image of the top of my present table on MS Word. As you can see some of the categories need spliting up.

I like your idea of clicking on the name for more information. My table is wider than an A4 sheet, and with other categories it would be wider. One category we could possibly do without is "Origin Country" as we are only focusing on German pork butchers.

I like the idea of having an initial screen with more basic information on. In addition to the categories you propose on this screen, we could add DOB, as many of the pork butchers have the same names, so it helps avoid confusion. Whenever I put links to a person in I always put their DOB in brackets after, although for our purposes here I just use the year rather than the specific date.

One thing that might be handy is if connecting families could have hyperlinks. My data is very person centric, so it lists who a person marries, who they work for, who works for them, who they are friends with etc. I therefore only link by people rather than families, as there are often several Schmidt families, for example, who are unrelated. If we could hyperlink all the connected people it would make it very easy to explore links, rather than typing in the names into the search, you could go straight to their file.

The idea of having a limited number of fields displayed at first would also be good for address searches, as you could see at an easy glace who was associated with the address.

If we adopted this format I guess we would need a newwebsite to host it?

[Berlin-Bob]

If we adopted this format I guess we would need a newwebsite to host it?

All my ideas so far are for a database on Rootschat

If the basic concept works, it should be easy to use the same database for other occuptions and adjust the input and output  accordingly.

Bob

[Berlin-Bob]

Still thinking out loud .... 

I've made a copy of the SIT software and now I'm modifying it (recycled software  ) to try out some of the ideas we are talking about here.  This will help me/us to see what sort of problems could arise, what questions we still need to ask, and (already !) possible improvements.

For testing I'm using the data I filtered out from several pork butcher topics, as described in the topic opener.

Looking at Richard's data, he has several addresses for some of his people. In order to be able sort on address I've allowed 3 different addresses per person, and we'll see how it goes.

The "summary table (as described in reply #22) would then look like the image attached here. To fit more data in, I'm using abbreviations for countries and counties (e.g. BWU = Baden-Württemburg, english counties with Chapman Codes, etc) ).  These can be written out in full in the "page view"

Bob

[Histres]

Hello,
to all those who are thinking about a possible database for German pork butchers in Great Britain and Ireland.

I think Berlin-Bob is on a good way with his proposal of an alphabetical list with the main aspects of information combined with a second sheet that contains the details.

I attach an extract of my list that I have compiled.

Best wishes
Histres