Family Historian
Please note that the information is provided ‘as is’, without any representation or endorsement made and without warranty of any kind whether express or implied, including but not limited to the implied warranties of satisfactory quality, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement, compatibility, security and accuracy.
The opinions expressed here are those of the reviewer. We hope that you will add your views. Please see the note at the end of the review to find out how to.
Choose the review you are interested in from the table below or by using the menu links on the left.
| System requirements: | Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows 2000, Windows NT4, Windows XP; CD-ROM drive and approximately 15Mb of hard disk space to store the program and accompanying files. | |
|---|---|---|
| Website: | Family Historian |
|
| Publisher: | Calico Pie | |
| Price: | £49.95 - available
from UK genealogy software suppliers. Find out about software suppliers in the Family Records Resources section. |
|
| Data Entry: |   |
Family Historian displays data in a rather different way from many other family tree programs. There are two main windows available. A Records Window lists all the individuals, notes, sources, repositories and submitters in your database and a Properties Window gives you more details about an individual and allows you to move to their parents’, spouse’s or child’s record. Most data entry takes place in the Properties Window which itself has a number of different views which you move through by clicking on tabs. The main view includes the occupation, birth and death details (but unfortunately not baptism and burial), note, marriage, spouse and up to four children (you can scroll to see additional children). The detail view shows alternative names, religion and education amongst other things. Further events or attributes can be added on the event view and these can be chosen from an existing list or you can add your own. The list of events also includes birth, marriage and death data, the birth of children and the age of the individual at each stage so provides a useful chronology of a person’s life. Family Historian gives you great flexibility when adding notes. These can be attached to a single individual or marriage as usual, but can also be made available to link to multiple individuals in your database. This is a very useful feature allowing you to link, for example, all the people mentioned in a probate record. In any view, you can expand the window to see which sources have been linked to your data or to include a new citation to a source. You can add information when linking a source, pinpointing where exactly you found the information within the source and assessing its reliability. |
| Multimedia: | Family Historian contains some sophisticated features for linking multimedia objects to your database. You can link to or embed pictures, sound and video files and text documents. If you include a photograph of a group of individuals you can very simply outline each individual in the picture and link just that area to the individual’s database record. You can also focus on areas of a photograph and include a note to describe something – for example, you could identify a house in the distance as the family home. Photographs can then be used to illustrate charts. | |
| Charts: |  |
Charts (known as diagrams) are integral to Family Historian allowing you to view relationships and move around your database with ease. The basic charts are the vertical dropline trees familiar to UK family historians. A chart of an individual’s ancestors, descendants, both ancestors and descendants, or all relatives (you can specify the number of generations) can be produced with just a click of a button on the toolbar. Branches can be expanded or contracted by the use of expansion buttons. Other diagrams are available, including ones identifying all of an individual’s cousins: first, second etc. A click of a button reorganises a chart so that it will avoid page breaks when it is printed out. It is also possible to develop custom diagrams and there are many tools provided to do so. The options available, however, do make this aspect rather complex for users. |
| Reports: | Family Historian currently
has 28 standard queries which, once run, can be printed out. Custom
queries can also be generated once you have mastered the functionality
of the query engine. A drawback is that the program does not offer the reports which have become standard in other family tree software such as Family Group Sheets and Individual Summary Reports. The publishers intend, however, to introduce these with the next release of the program (version 2.1). |
|
| Web Pages: | Family Historian does not currently have a facility for automatically generating web pages. However, as its database is automatically stored as a GEDCOM file, no information would be corrupted or lost if you were to use one of the several available programs (some of which are freeware) for converting GEDCOM to HTML. | |
| Help and support: | The program includes
a printed Quick Start Tutorial which gives you very useful pointers
for starting to enter data and produce charts. A 127 page user
manual is included with the program as a PDF file (viewable using
the free Adobe Acrobat Reader plug-in). This walks you through
tutorials for all the principal features of the program using
databases and multimedia files included on your installation CD-ROM. A currently fairly quiet rootsweb email list can be subscribed to by sending the message "subscribe" to FAMILY-HISTORIAN-USERS-admin@rootsweb.com. This list is monitored by the program makers so this is good way to get feedback directly from them. |
|
| Conclusion: | Family Historian is
very new on the market, having been launched in May 2002. Its
early stage of development means that it lacks a number of shortcuts
and facilities available in other, more mature family tree programs. For example, the lack of standard reports and a location database is a disadvantage, although these will be introduced in due course. There are also a number of minor niggles which will probably be resolved in later versions of the program such as the failure to suggest the father’s surname for new children being added to the database to save a few keystrokes. However, it is certainly worth taking a look at Family Historian for its more unusual features and strong functionality with multimedia objects and charts. The query engine also allows you to look at your data in ways which may not be possible in many other programs. With a wide enough user base, this software will be developed to meet genealogists’ needs more closely over the coming years. |
|
| Rating: |
|
|
| © Ruth Selman 2002 | ||
| Feedback: | Submitted by: Daniel Lawton The new upgrade to family historian (v.2.2) has included many new improved features that was very much need in the original - printing and displaying the family tree results are much better. Its database/reporting function seems very comprehensive - I recommend it. |
|
Would you like to add your views about this software? Or to write your own review of a software package you use to help you with your research?
First you should read the terms for submitting peer reviews, and then use the contact form to send your comments/review to the webmaster.
