Tracking and Organizing My Genealogy Studies

Over the years I have read lots of articles, books, blogs, attended talks, watched webinars, learned from others. But if I was asked to name even a fraction of them I would not be able to do so.

So I decided that I needed some way to document this upcoming year of study in preparation of becoming a Certified Genealogist.

First requirement was that it fit my way of thinking so using it would be instinctive. If my method was difficult I might use it short term but not long term. I learned this from a book called "Organizing From The Inside Out" by Julie Morgenstern.

Second requirement was that it would include all the information I needed so that I (or someone else) would be able to locate the information again. But again keeping it simple enough that I would use it and not feel bogged down having to write a bunch of stuff down.

So this is what I have come up with...

I will be using Excel spreadsheets. Someone else might use Word, OneNote, Evernote or even Scrivener. As I will explain later in this post, I am going to also use OneNote for a particular portion of my tracking. But for now I will concentrate on why I decided on Excel and how I am going to utilize it.

I have been playing around learning how to use Excel for a couple of years now and have become quite comfortable with the program.

Excel will allow me to create a "book" of spreadsheets to track the different types of learning I will be doing. Each sheet has its own tab that I can name, allowing me to know what is on that sheet and to easily navigate between them.

My tabs (the "How" I am getting the information) are titled:

*Webinars
*Online Courses
*Books
*Live Lectures & Seminars (meaning I was physically at them)
*Live Courses and Classes (again I was physically at them)
*Blogs
*Magazines and Periodicals (including newsletters and professional journals)

Each tab has some variation of the following columns:

*Title (of Webinar, Course, Book, Lecture, Blog Post, Article this takes care of the "What")
*Presenter/Author/Teacher (This takes care of the "Who")
*Date of Presentation/Publication (This takes care of part of the "When")
*Location (URL for things online, for live events where the event was held, for books I have Publisher in this spot, for magazines I have Magazine title. This takes care of the "Where")
*Length (Time of presentation, or if written word number of pages.)
*Date I watched/read/attended/completed (That takes care of the other part of "When")
*Subject/Topic
*Notes (some things, like webinars and classes, are labeled "Beginner" "Intermediate" "Advanced" If something I do has such a label I will include it in the Notes column)

I mentioned also using OneNote in my record keeping for my project. I will use OneNote to organize any Syllabus I get from a class, lecture, or webinar. I think I will also add the Table of Contents from books. This gives me a quick easy way to go through the things I have heard and read, as well as good documentation of what was included in that lecture/course/book.

For those who have managed to reach this point of my post, hopefully you have found some inspiration and ideas for tracking your own learning. Whether the topic is Genealogy or some other subject (especially if it is for your profession) tracking your educational pursuits is probably a good idea.

Let me know what you think in the comments below.

Rebooting my Genealogy Do-Over

Thomas McEntee has just started his fourth cycle of his Genealogy Do-Over Program. Each cycle lasts just 13 weeks.

I was so psyched when I first heard of his project late December 2014. I thought, "This is just what I need to get my personal genealogy project into shape! I can go through my research and my mom's research and make it into one coherent project." Well, life and health interfered.

I had surgery in March. Then after I was finally feeling healed from that I fell and hurt my ribs. Plus I started on Cymbalta for my Fibromyalgia. Now that med may work great for some, but for me it caused major depression like I had never experienced in my life!

Ribs are healed. I am off the Cymbalta and my moods are finally back to normal. So here I am ready to get back into the swing of things.

I decided since Thomas is just starting another cycle I will start back at Week One too. This will allow me to refresh my memory about what I am doing and how I want to proceed. Week One's topics/assignments are:
1) Setting Previous Research Aside,
2) Preparing to Research, and
3) Establishing Base Practices and Guidelines

Well, I had set aside my research in January, so that was easy.

Preparing to Research?!?! Aren't you supposed to just decide to open Ancestry and randomly search? I am just joking, I think. But all too often that is what I have done. I have some time, my mind wanders to the subject of my family history and I open up my tree in Family Tree Maker and log into Ancestry.com.

In the discussion of topic 2 "Preparing to Research" Thomas mentioned having a "Warm Up Routine" and that got me to thinking. I know an athlete should warm up his muscles in preparation of working out. I know a singer warms up their vocal cords before singing (or they should). What do I, as a genealogist, need to do to be "warmed up" or prepared to research?

From thinking about that came this first document, "Linda's Warm-Up Exercises." Use my list as a starting place for you to think about what you want to have on your list.

The final topic for Week One is about establishing Base Practices and Guidelines. I had written my "Base Practices and Guidelines," back in January so I decided to just review what I had already written.

1. Track ALL work! including dead ends, negative results and non-productive searches. (If non-productive make a notation of why it was non-productive: tired? interrupted? bad copy you couldn't read? Also make a record of what search terms you used -- later on you can go back and see that you didn't try wildcards, or a certain wildcard pattern, or you didn't swap the surname and given name.)
2. Diligence and integrity are essential in doing genealogy research.
3. Always use proper source citation when entering information, if it doesn't have a source it doesn't belong in the database!
4. Take the time to do a careful and thorough search, whether in a database or on a document. Don't rush you may miss something important. If it takes an hour to carefully look at 1 document, then that is what it takes, there will always be another day to look at other documents.
5. Don't get sidetracked by shiny objects. Write them down to look at later, stick with your research plan for that day.
6. Stop working on genealogy by 11 pm so you can get to bed at a halfway reasonable hour.

For the most part I think what I had was pretty solid, but that maybe it needed just one more item.

7. Develop a work flow chart to make sure you don't skip steps when doing research and reviewing documents.

So that is where this document came from. It is a visual flow chart of the process I want to go through when doing my research. Again use this as a starting point for you to think about what steps you need to be including in research habits.

Just read a comment in the Do-Over Facebook Group about a "Cool Down" Routine for what they will do at the end of each research session. I will have to think on that idea and come up with something for that too I think.

What's in your toolbox?

It's a new day, new week, new month.... the new "assignment" for week 5 of the do-over is: Building a Research Toolbox and Citing Sources.

Building a Research Toolbox basically means locating websites that will be useful to you in your research and then organizing the list in such a way that you can actually FIND the link that you are needing. One way to do that is to make folders in your browser's favorite or bookmark list to organize them. Another option is to use a spreadsheet like Excel to organize them. Or you can use a program such as Evernote or One Note to organize them. Another choice would be to share them on your blog so that others can also benefit from your work.

The assignment is to figure out what would work best with your style of working, and then be consistent in your use of it. You also have to be able to keep your links up to date and be able to remove links that no longer work. Thomas MacEntee shared with us a free program called AM-Deadlink used to verify links in your current bookmarks (Internet Explorer, Firefox and Chrome) or links pasted into a text file.

I downloaded the program and when I ran it I did find a couple of deadlinks, but not too many. So in that aspect I am doing good. I have decided that I will just get all my bookmarked sites together in one browser (I have IE, Firefox and Chrome all installed on my computer and I have 2 computers so have a bit of combining to do). Once they are all in one browser I will then get them organized in folders and subfolders to make it easier to locate the links that I want easily.

Once I get it all organized I will share my personal toolbox with you. It may take me a bit to get it done but hopefully sometime this week I will be able to say I have finished this part of this assignment.