Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

What the Pros Know: Research Secrets

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What the Pros Know: Research Secrets of the ProsI’m so excited to be hosting a second What the Pros Know workshop for Family Tree University. This one is called What the Pros Know: Research Secrets of the Pros. It will run June 11 to 17. (Back in January I hosted What the Pros Know: Genealogy Organizing Tips.)

In the workshop I interview four prominent genealogy experts, each on a different aspect of research. The experts have been asked to share secrets from their own genealogy research.

The audio interviews (which together are one hour) play behind a slide deck that you can see while listening. During the week of the workshop, participants will have access to an online discussion forum and for three hours the evening of June 14, I’ll be on hand live to answer questions on the forum.

Here are the experts for this go-around and their topics:

As I write this, I’ve completed three of the four interviews and they’ve been fun and, I think, really interesting. I’m pumped up to explore the resources I’ve learned about.

You can sign up for the workshop, which costs $59.99 here. I hope to see you on the discussion forums!

 

A time-saving addition to my digital workflow

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I’ve posted before about how I process documents that I download from online sources. In an ideal world, I follow my workflow from start to finish as soon as I download a document. But in the real world, it’s not unusual for me to run out of time to process the document immediately. (By “process” I mean, create a source, extract facts, add those facts to my genealogy software and properly file the document on my hard drive). That’s an inevitable outcome in researching in short, frequent sessions, as I do.

When I download a document, without fail I rename the file using my file-naming protocol (Year Document Type-Ancestor Name-Location) and file it in my Surnames folder. But all too often I don’t have time to properly process it and the document languishes in the Surnames holding pen until I do have time.

Today, I added a small item to my digital workflow. As soon as I download a document and rename it, I right-click on the file in my Mac’s Finder, select Get Info, then in the Comments section, I paste the URL of where I found the document. That way, if I need more information to create a source, it’s simple for me to get back to the online source. Per my workflow, once the source citation is created, I replace the URL in the Comments area with the citation itself (which includes the URL).

It’s a small thing, but I know this is going to save me time in finding the document online again. And it will reduce aggravation. Sometimes little things can make a big difference!

For more in-depth information on going digital with your genealogy research, check out The Paperless Genealogy Guide, a 44-page downloadable guide written by paperless expert Brooks Duncan and me and available for $9.

Health reports from raw DNA

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My friend, Shannon Wilkinson, passed along to me an email from Promethease, a company that generate health reports based on your autosomal DNA results. For the next couple of days you can create a free account and receive a free, downloadable report. If you’ve already done a DNA test, as I have, you can upload the raw data and find what your genes tell you about your health risks, good and bad. This offer expires Thursday, May 10, 2018. (Here’s a review of Promethease from last October on the blog DNAeXplained.)

I appreciate Shannon telling me about it, but I’m going to ponder it for a day before submitting. In order to even enter the site, you have to agree to some legal terms and the last one is, I accept the risk of learning that I may be at high risk for a debilitating disease. That gave me pause. I’m not sure I want to know that I’m at a high risk for a debilitating disease. My rational mind says that knowledge is power and if I know that I’m at risk perhaps I can do something to reduce the risk. My emotional side thinks it’s easier not to know.

Last year, I did submit my DNA to VitaGene, which provides health information with an eye toward taking appropriate nutritional supplements. I had no problem with that and found the results of passing interest.

So I’ll ponder for a day, but I suspect I’ll take advantage of this free offer. What about you? Have you received health information from your DNA data and are you glad you did?

 

Don’t ignore your old paper files

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If you’ve read this blog from its start six years ago, you know that I used to be a paper person with my genealogy research. Storing documents on my hard drive made me nervous before I had a solid folder structure and file-naming system in place. So I put together a couples-based folder system that worked for me.

It turns out there were some documents that I couldn’t easily file by couple and I put them into a separate file. Then I committed the cardinal sin of paper management: I didn’t label that file.

For years now, I’ve been paperless with my genealogy. I can’t remember the last time I printed something I would have to file.

Yesterday, though, I remembered a family history written in the 80s by a cousin of my grandfather.  I wanted to look at but it wasn’t on my hard drive, so I dug into my paper files looking for it. It wasn’t where I expected to find it, so I kept looking. And that’s when I found the unlabeled file of miscellaneous papers.

Happily, the family history was there and it’s now scanned and filed on my hard drive, with the paper version filed where I would expect to find it. (I suppose I could part with all that paper, but it’s not doing anybody any harm, so I haven’t pulled the trigger on that.)

Also in that mystery file, I found a packet of papers about my Adams line that had a sticky note on it that said, in my handwriting, “Return to Aunt Gwen.” Yikes. Aunt Gwen is my father’s sister. I haven’t even looked at it yet, but I brought it to my desk to process and scan. Then I’ll return the papers to my aunt.

How about you? Do you paper files of genealogy research that you no longer use? It might be worthwhile to dive in there and see if there are any fun documents (filed or otherwise) that you’ve forgotten about!