Status Master list: Help

Every source that is referenced by a citation in the family tree is recorded in the Status Master List. This way all of the information collected about a particular source is in a central record. This, in particular facilitates ensuring that particular sources are always identified in the same way.

You get to the Status Master List from the Family Tree Top Level Services web page. When you first enter the Status Master List web page it displays the first 20 sources in the list in alphabetical order. You can scroll through the complete list by clicking on the forward and backward arrows at the top of the list.

You use the "Pattern" field to search for sources based upon their textual representation. Technically the value you enter in this field is a regular expression pattern. The following are just some of the ways you can use this pattern.

• Ordinary text, particularly text containing only letters, digits, and spaces, matches anywhere in the source. For example entering "Michigan" will match all sources that contain the text "Michigan". The match ignores the case, so this will also match "michigan" and "MICHIGAN".
• The period '.' matches any single character. You can use this any time you do not know, or care, about what character is present at a particular spot in the source.
• The caret '^' (shift-6 on American keyboards) matches to the beginning of the source. For example to find sources that start with "New" enter "^New", as just entering "New" matches sources that contain the word "New" anywhere in the text.
• The dollar sign '$' (shift-4 on American keyboards) matches to the end of the source. For example to find sources that end with "USA" enter "USA$".
• The asterisk '*' (shift-8 on American keyboards) causes the immediately preceding character to match zero or more repetitions. This is most commonly used with the period to skip over any number of characters that do not match. For example the pattern "Mi.*USA" matches any source that has the text "Mi" and later on the text "USA" with any number of arbitrary characters in between. For example it will match sources containing "MI, USA" and "Michigan, USA", as well as "Mississippi, USA".
• There are many more options which you can experiment with.

Each of the sources displayed on this web page shows:

• a button displaying the unique numeric key of the source,
• the type or category to which this source belongs,
• the source name as it is displayed in reports,
• the number of citations that reference this source.

For example:

The button displaying the numeric key of the source is a link to a web page that displays the details recorded about the source, and if you are authorized to do so, permits you to edit those details.