Research Goals: The Follow-up

Last year I worked on going over my genealogy with the "Genealogy Do Over". In particular I liked listing out my research goals. Well, here I am a year later, and have done a lot of work on my goals.
I finished up the genealogy photobook for my mother, and did a lot of research for it. Here is a photo of my spreadsheet at the beginning of last year:

And here is a more recent shot of it:

As you can see I have filled in some more of the squares. While there are still more empty spaces than I'd like, it's nice to see how far I've come.

View the photobooks I made!

Tracking Research - Genealogy Do-Over Week 3

For the third week of the genealogy do-over we are working on keeping track of our research. Once you have your goals, you can start researching, and to avoid redoing too much work you have to track it.
To that end, I am going to start using Thomas MacEntee's research log (linked in the do-over blog). I used to have a spreadsheet, but when my computer crashed, the spreadsheet went with it. So, now I am going to do it on Google Drive, since it will be available anywhere I have internet access.

Now to get back in the habit of actually using a research log.

Research Goals - Genealogy Do-over week 2

I have very specific research goals this year. I am doing a project of my mother's genealogy, to match the one I did for my father. I did research, gathered sources, and made a photobook. For much of his family I had to translate everything from Dutch and French (the languages of the records from Belgium), so in the scrap/photo book I included the original scanned document, and a translation. I put maps, family trees, and what few personal photographs we had in as well.

This year I am making one for my mom. Surprisingly, I have even less information on her family. Her mom's family came from England as Mormon immigrants, and have several genealogist Mormon descendants who have done work. Unfortunately not all of it is documented online. Not that it isn't documented at all, it's just not sourced online. But still it shouldn't be too hard to contact some of my older relatives that live in Utah to get copies of some of those sources and research. We also have lots of family photos from the previous couple of generations.

On the other side of her family, my paternal grandfather, there is much less information. Half the family is from England, and the other from Germany. To my knowledge little research has been done for them except what my grandma did years ago. I have easy access to that, but there isn't much there.

This brings me back around to research goals. For last years photobook project I created a simple spreadsheet for some of the basic information I might look for. I didn't find all the information, but I did find enough to put the book together. So, I am using my spreadsheet again this year for my moms family. This gives me a quick visual of the information I have and what I need.

Click the photo for a downloadable PDF form

Click here for a blank Excel Spreadsheet file

From here I can make specific plans on how and where to search for the missing information. I have this both on my computer, and as a printout, so it's easy to take it with me.


UPDATE!
I have finished my photobook project and posted a follow-up HERE!

Starting With A Clean Slate - Genealogy Do-Over Week 1

This week for the Genealogy Do-Over the topics are about cleaning the slate and starting fresh.

The first step is to set aside previous research. 95% of my research is digitally stored, so it's pretty easy to set aside and hopefully not too tempting to look at. My father, who has a deep drawer of files might not have such an easy time, but for me it's fairly simple. Also, considering that I lost my most recent gedcoms/rootsmagic files (don't worry, my mourning period has passed), starting over there isn't too difficult either.


The second step is preparation for future research. This definitely isn't the exciting part of family history work for me, but I know it will pay off in the end.

I usually do research after the kids go to bed, and on Sundays when my husband can watch them and give me a few hours to myself. This part of research works best for me because it provides the greatest amount of time distraction free. However it also leads to late nights, which leads to tired thinking and therefore more mistakes. From now on I should set a stopping time for myself and not just get sucked in. After all, if I track my research properly I should be able to pick it up again the next day without too much trouble.

I have a research binder that I should always have with me when researching. It has word lists for the languages I often need to search in, maps of the places I'm researching (very helpful for me), pedigree charts, and various forms I use often. It also has a research log/notes, which needs to be updated.

The last topic for this week is about establishing 'best practices'.

I have been pretty good about citing sources, but not as good as I could be. I write down the basic info, but want to be better at proper citation. Luckily for me, many genealogy websites can do it for you. There are also citation websites that you can simply fill in a form and it will give you a proper citation. And of course there are source citation forms/templates on RootsMagic that I can utilize for when I input things by hand into the program.

One other thing I specifically want to work on is tracking my research. I have a simple columned form I made that I write the date, where I am researching, and who I looked up. This is fine, but sometimes isn't enough. I need to find a more detailed form. I should be recording not just those basics, but also what I found and what info was there. I will look online to see if there are already forms out there that will work for me, or I will make a new one.

Here are my "must do's" for future genealogy research:
1. Family history without citations is mythology. Always cite my sources.
2. Assume nothing. People's memories are often wrong, and family stories are embellished. If you can't find someone where you think they should be, throw out those assumptions and look somewhere else.
3. Record where I search. I don't want to have to search the same records for the same people over and over.
4. Back up my files. I'd hate to have to start all over again because of a computer crash (again).
5. Remember some people just won't be found. There are some brick walls that I may never break, and I should learn to set them aside when I feel like banging my head against them. I can always come back later if I am feeling too cocky about my research.

Genealogy Do-Over

Last month at geneabloggers.com, Thomas MacEntee announced he was doing a Genealogy Do-Over, and started a website, Facebook group and Pinterest board for others to join in with him.

This is very timely for me, since I lost some of my data recently in a computer crash. So in some ways I have to start over anyway.

This group of genealogists, and the weekly topics to improve your research, should help me not only get my information back, but document it properly, cite sources, and just be a better genealogist all around.

Can't wait to get started. One of my genealogy related goals this year is to cite sources and document my research better (in part recording things on this blog). My other big goal is to make a photobook for my mom like the one for my dad (which requires doing more research of course).