Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

I’m interviewed on DNA Weekly

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I had the pleasure last month of being interviewed via Zoom for the website DNA Weekly. The interviewer, Ditsa Keren, transcribed and edited the interview, and it’s presented in print form. Here’s the link if you’d like to read it: Organize Your Family History for Future Generations.

I don’t do much with genetic genealogy so I was a little surprised to be asked, but I was happy to talk about organizing traditional genealogy. And I shared my views on genetic genealogy.

DNA Weekly looks like a great resource for those interested in genetic genealogy. In addition to its blog (where my interview appears as well as interviews with others), it offers reviews of different testing platforms and weighs in on what it considers the best testing kits for various types of DNA tests.

I hope you enjoy the interview!

December 30 x 30 challenge: How did it go?

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Happy new year! I just love turning a calendar page to a new year. It feels particularly good to say goodbye to 2020 and all its trials and tribulations. But before we do, let’s talk about the December 2020 30 x 30 challenge. How did it go for you?

December is a tough month for a challenge, I know, because there are often so many holiday- and end-of-the-year-related activities. So bravo to those of you who were up for a challenge. I did pretty well the first half of the month, but slipped a little the second half. Here’s my excuse: After 21 years with our old bed, my husband and I finally bought a new one. We went from a queen- to a king-sized bed. What does this have to do with anything? The need to wedge that large bed into our small bedroom produced a cascading array of tasks that kept me very busy! But it was worth it. The new, fancy Sleep Number bed is fantastic.

In any case, I think I researched only 23 of the 30 days. But I’m still glad for the challenge because I know I would not have been able to accomplish that much research without it.

It’s a new year, so I’ll be creating a fresh research log and working on my research goals for 2021. I’ll probably have another 30 x 30 challenge in February. (Though I guess it will be a 30 x 28 challenge.)

Please share: How was this month’s challenge for you? Did you find that December was a tough month to fit in research or was that not relevant? I’d love to hear from you!

P.S. Thanks very much to those of you who have already taken advantage of my End-of-the-Year Sale on Orderly Roots guides. If you haven’t bought the guides yet (but want to), you have until Sunday evening to get all three for the price of one!

End-of-the-year sale on Orderly Roots guides!

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Need a little extra help and motivation getting organized in the new year? Then I have a special sale for you.  I currently offer three Orderly Roots guides, downloadable pdfs that I’ve written on topics surrounding organizing your genealogy research. I’m in the process of writing more and hope to publish a new one very soon.

In the meantime, in the spirit of getting organized for the new year, I’m offering a very special sale on the existing guides. Today through Sunday, you can buy all three Orderly Roots guides for the price of one! Put all three in your cart and use the promo code NEWYEAR at checkout and you’ll be charged only $9.00. (The sale doesn’t include the Paperless Genealogy Guide.)

Don’t wait! The coupon code expires at 12:01 am central time on January 4.

 

Quick Tip #12: Don’t enter a fact without creating a source citation

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Here’s the next in my occasional series of bite-size Quick Tips. Click on the Quick Tips tag for my other Quick Tips. Because I tend to write longer posts, I wanted to provide a quick-to-read (and quick-to-write) post every couple of weeks on a small topic that pops into my head. I think this tip is an especially important one.

Don’t enter a fact without creating a source citation

When I first caught the genealogy bug at the turn of this century, I wrote down facts willy nilly without bothering to note where the fact came from. My “research” progressed quickly, but I ended up with an unreliable mess. I abandoned researching for a number of years and when I came back to in 2011 I vowed never to enter a fact into my database without creating a source citation and assigning that source to the fact.

That policy has served me well and is part of my digital workflow. Having a source for every single fact in my Reunion database means that when conflicting information come up, I can easily evaluate the sources and make a determination on what is more likely to be true. It gives me confidence in my research. And it makes my research more credible (and valuable) to others.

Photo by Sam Dan Truong on Unsplash