Glossary of Terms

All-in-one or All-relatives charts. are very useful on occasions where you want to show all the relatives of a particular person. They can become rather complicated and only the best programs seem to be able to cope with the complexities of laying them out in a logical format. There is a compromise between size and making the chart easy to read and understand.

Collaboration By using the Collaboration capabilities of Heritage Family Tree Deluxe, you can work together with a group of people (typically relatives) on recording your family history. To work with a ' Collaboration File', you place a family file on a central server on the Internet. You allow others to access that file. This means that you and your associates, anywhere in the world, can work together on a single, master file. For example, you would place a family database on this server. Then you would alert appropriate members of your family that this file is available, and give them rights to edit or simply view the data. You and the others then take turns updating this master file. When your cousin updates some information that she has found, you will be able to see that information the next time you check that file out and view it. When you update the family file with information that you have found, your cousin will have access to that information the next time she works with the file. This can eliminate the need to send GEDCOM files back and forth and Merge the two sets of information.

Complexity (1-5). The lowest number is used for programs that have just the minimum basic family tree fields such as name, birth date, marriage, death date and the most simplest of diagrams and reports. The highest number represents a program that has facilities for every possible piece of information that you may wish to record against individuals and families and where fields don' t already exist you are able to create your own. They also provide reports and diagrams with the most flexibility when it comes to content and layout.

Fan charts are a decorative way to display a family tree and are often only available in the better programs. They make good presentation charts to give away.


GEDCOM was developed by the Family History Department of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) to provide a flexible, uniform format for exchanging computerized genealogical data. GEDCOM is an acronym for GE nealogical D ata Com munication. Its purpose is to foster the sharing of genealogical information and the development of a wide range of inter-operable software products to assist genealogists, historians, and other researchers. Most family tree software will export and import a gedcom file, although some do it better than others. Generally the more modern a program is the more accurately it will handle the gedcom process. It is worth considering if you are thinking of using more than one type of software or if you share information with others. You may also want to send a file away to a company for printing onto a large sheet of paper and again this may require you to supply the data in a gedcom file.

Master Sources These could be documents such as a newspaper, birth certificate, census sheet, micro-fiche or even an online resource. Sources could relate to several persons and may even be verbal information passed down by a living relative. You may well accumulate hundreds of these over many years. The ability to view, edit and create sources independently of individuals in your tree is useful.

Most recent edition. Software is constantly being updated and it is worth checking that you are getting the most recent edition if you wish to take advantage of all the latest developments. However some older programs do offer excellent value for money for complete beginners.

Multiple dates for a single event. This is useful where you may have two conflicting dates for the same event such as a birth. Until you get the opportunity to check original records it is useful to be able to record them both. (It may also turn out that you are looking at two different individuals.)

Notes. These usually relate to an individual and may contain any information you may wish to record about someone in your family tree. Some programs will also allow you to create notes separately and then link the same note to more than one person.

OneWorldTree Details to be added

Pedigree charts. are usually draw either from left to right with the root person on the left and the parents, grand-parents, g-grandparents in columns to the right. This is often the way they are displayed on screen and allows easy navigation up and down your tree. Sometimes when printing the tree out on paper it is good to show the root person at the bottom of the printout with parents in the row above and grand-parents in the next row up etc.

Rescale Charts. As far as we know Family Historian is the only program that will allow a chart to be rescaled to fit more or less sheets of paper just by clicking and dragging with the mouse.

Research records. The program Family Tree Maker will help you find relatives on the internet by comparing your family tree to the records held by Ancestry.com in America. The data held by Ancestry.com is not all USA based as they have specific databases for UK genealogists.

Source Citations These are the particular bits of information you are referring to in a source so it might be a newspaper article or a particular fact such as the maiden name of a mother on a child's birth certificate. Citations are usually only relevant to one person and each Master source may have many citations linking it to numerous individuals.

Repositories (Source Locations) A Source location or repository is a place where the source of the information is usually kept. This could be either the location where the original information is now kept such as a local archive or the online 1901 census or it could be places where copies might be found such as your own family documents in an archive folder at home. You will probably not have a huge number of locations.

Users. Consider whether you are a novice at computing or an experienced computer user just starting out in family history and genealogy research. Confident computer users should have no problem using any of our software. We advise those newcomers to computers and genealogy to stick to the more basic programs to begin with. You can always transfer your data automatically to a new program at a later date.

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