Giver of a photograph!

[Norwegian-Sardines]

Over the last 15 years, I’ve been repeatedly ask about how to give credit to the “giver” of a photograph. Colloquially “the source of the image”.

Some people want to use the Source_Record link in the media object, but I have issues with using that!

1. The Source_Record is, and should only be used, in relationship to a source citation. This would be the “Science of Sourcing” view of this record type.

2. A source->media->source relationship could become a circular construct.

Without a better answer I currently use a shared NOTE to provide the information.

Personally, I rather have a different structure, possibly using the Submitter_Record, so that we can maintain an accession structure for the item, more in line with what we do at the museum and in library collections!

Thoughts

[tychonievich]

Discussed in steering committee

We agree that the provenance of a source (who handled it in what order, how it was copied/derived, etc) is not presently part of the specification and a NOTE is the best place to store it in 7.0. We have a sources team working on this and related issues.

[dthaler]

There are two types of provenance: derivation and stewardship. Derivation refers to copies and other transformations, and has a proposal for comment at the link Luther provides above. Stewardship refers to transfer of physical possession such as of a Family Bible, tintype photograph, etc. A proposal for that is at https://github.com/dthaler/gedcom-citations/tree/stewardship. Feedback welcome there.

[Norwegian-Sardines]

I’m not sure either of these two additions answers my question! Derivative provides the source of the source, stewardship provides who owns or owned a source in time. But if we have a media object associated with a source record, who (what person) can we link to the media object that gave us the photo? This sounds like stewardship, but to get to the repo we have to go thru the Source_record which is how we got to the media, this could cause us to loop if not careful! I’m suggesting we need a new record type(or direct) to provide connection to the REPO.

[dthaler]

this could cause us to loop if not careful!

GEDCOM already has other cases where "loops" are permitted (NOTE.SOUR.NOTE.SOUR...) so already requires being "careful".

(This is not a disagreement per se, just a data point to consider in the discussion.)

[Norwegian-Sardines]

this could cause us to loop if not careful!

GEDCOM already has other cases where "loops" are permitted (NOTE.SOUR.NOTE.SOUR...) so already requires being "careful".

(This is not a disagreement per se, just a data point to consider in the discussion.)

Personally I don't agree that a NOTE Record (or even an inline note) requires or deserves a Source! In 40 years I've never seen a need to source a NOTE. Normally when you need to use a citation (aka "a source"), you are quoting someone or something that is not of your own creation. Notes in a GEDCOM IMHO should be written by the data entry person as their own thoughts about the item the note is attached, technically it should not contain genealogical data, although some people use it that way when they can't find a place to put something. A Source can have a Note, I use these to question the sources accuracy or to write myself a reminder to research additional information!

[albertemmerich]

Let us try to handle the following situations:

1. the photograph was taken by a person (photographer). Could be coded by AUTH like the autor of a book
2. the photograph was found in a publication (book, web page, ...). Could be coded by SOUR including SOUR.PAGE where in the publication it was found
3. the photograph was passed to the researcher by a person, who was not the photographer. This situation could be coded using SUBM (add SUBM to OBJE record)