Source-centric genealogy is an approach to doing genealogy in which information is viewed as flowing from sources to evidence and finally to conclusions. This is done in such a way that conclusions can be traced back to the evidence they are based on, and the evidence knows what part of which source it came from. Another important aspect of source-centric genealogy is that it makes it possible to take a source and see what evidence has been extracted from it, and to see what conclusions have been drawn from a particular piece of evidence. This makes it possible to avoid unending duplication of work.
The essential elements of a source-centric genealogical system include:
1. A source authority, which tracks all known sources of genealogical data.
2. An artifact archive, which holds images of records and other digital artifacts for convenience in accessing original records.
3. A structured data archive, which holds structured genealogical data that has been extracted from individual sources. Its purpose is to accurately represent what a source says.
4. A family tree, which holds conclusions about what real people have lived and how they are related. Each person in the family tree has links to the various entries in the structured data archive that are believed to refer to the same real person.
It is also important that verification work be tracked so that it, too, can be done "once" and "for all" instead of having to be repeated by everyone.
There were several papers on this topic by Randy Wilson at the 2002, 2003 and 2006 Family History Technology workshops presented at BYU. Below are links to each paper:
- Bidirectional Source Linking: Doing Genealogy 'once' and 'for all'--explains the importance of being able to follow links from a source to conclusions as well as the other way around.
- Efficient Genealogy through Personal Extraction and Automated Verification--explains the importance of extracting structured evidence from sources separately from making conclusions using that evidence. Also explains why it is important to track verification work.
- High-level View of a Source-Centric Genealogical Model: "The Model with Four Boxes"--summarizes the most crucial elements of a source-centric genealogical model and explains why each is critical.
