Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

How They Do It: Megan Smolenyak

By Leave a Comment

This month I’m thrilled to present the insights of genealogical adventurer and storyteller (don’t you love that description?) Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak. Megan is well known as a writer, speaker and TV guest and is the author of six books, most recently Hey, America, Your Roots Are Showing and Who Do You Think You Are?: The Essential Guide to Tracing Your Family History, the companion guide to the TV series. Her personality shines through in this interview. Enjoy!

How long have you been doing genealogy?

I’ve been doing genealogy since a 6th grade homework assignment got me started, so decades now!

What’s your favorite thing about being a genealogist?

I get to wake up every day and play detective to help other people. That’s pretty great, isn’t it? I love the thrill of the hunt, and playing at the fringes. That’s why I was one of the first to play with DNA, use genealogy for forensic purposes (e.g., military identifications, FBI civil rights cold cases, coroners’ offices, etc.), produce roots-oriented videos, and so forth. I like experimenting to find different ways to apply genealogical research and hopefully wind up doing some good.

What’s your biggest challenge when it comes to organizing your genealogy?

My biggest challenge organization-wise is my personal research. I’m quite organized when it comes to others’ family history, but not so much with my own. I don’t get much time to play with it, but suffice it to say, I have decades of research in a variety of formats.

What is your favorite technology tool for genealogy?

I wouldn’t say they’re my favorite, but more the toys I’m playing with lately. I’ve been pondering recently how to ensure that my personal research survives me, and since there are no keen genealogists among my close family members, I’ve been looking for ways to share what I’ve learned in ways that relatives might find half-way interesting. So I’ve been experimenting with what you might call distribution tools.

Megan’s wall of Mixtiles

For instance, I have lots of my father’s slides from our time living in Europe, so I selected and edited some and now have a display along a long hallway. To do that, I used the Mixtiles app, and what’s great about it is that each “tile” can be applied and removed multiple times, so I can rotate the content over time. Then I took it a step further and made a slender book of these same slides using Blurb and sent copies to my dad and siblings.

If you were starting out new as a genealogist what would you do differently?

When I first shifted careers to genealogy, I said ‘yes’ to every opportunity that came my way, and I would still do that again today. That said, I should have started turning down some invitations earlier than I did. While I’m beyond grateful for all the opportunities that have come my way, I got myself over-obligated and it took years to dig out.

Do you keep a research log? If so, what format?

It depends on the project and scale, but for the most part, conventional research logs in good, old-fashioned Word. And I’m a big fan of white boards when juggling multiple sub-projects (e.g., orchestrating research for a TV season). I once worked in a place that had an entire wall made of white board and I’d love to have that again!

How do you keep track of clues or ideas for further research?

Again, fairly old school. For instance, a dedicated notebook for a particular project. Or a generic notebook for multiple projects where I scribble ideas and then create an on-going table of contents (from the back of the notebook in) so I can easily find what I’m looking for (color-coding often comes into play). Sometimes I’ll append pages for this purpose to a research log. Also, for those times when I trip across cool new sites I want to explore, but know I’ll get distracted by, I’ll add them into a slot in my calendar app and then give myself time – usually a random Friday afternoon – to play with several at once.

What’s the most important thing you do to prepare for a research trip?

Homework, homework, homework. I explore the websites of all the repositories I plan to go to and dig into their catalogs, online collections, and the like so I know exactly what’s necessary and exactly what’s possible. I’ll often wind up back-and-forthing with an archivist or librarian in advance – sometimes to have materials waiting, perhaps to clarify details about a particular collection, or maybe to pick their brains for further ideas. I recently did this for a research trip to the Archives of Macau, and it saved so much time – not to mention, gave me some gems I probably wouldn’t have found on my own.

What’s your biggest piece of advice to genealogists in terms of organizing their research?

This is probably a blinding flash of the obvious, but get yourself organized when you’re first starting out. Form those habits early. If nothing else, you will save yourself so much re-work by not constantly re-inventing your research trail.

Do you have a dedicated space in your home for doing genealogy research? What’s it like?

Yes, since I’ve been a professional genealogist for two decades now, I’ve always had a dedicated room for my office wherever we lived (Virginia, New Jersey and Florida so far), and they’ve all had their own vibe. My current one is lighter and airier than in the past – partly due to digitization reducing the need for filing cabinets and other storage. I have a large sit/stand desk (very reasonable at IKEA), a filing credenza, a bookcase, and a utility cart (IKEA again) and library cart (Demco caters to libraries, but sells to individuals) – the last two for current projects. I also have a sleeper ottoman (that’s hardly ever been opened into a bed) where visitors can plop themselves down and get comfortable. The walls are light teal, the furniture is mostly white, and there’s lots of colorful art. So all that, terrific views and Mixtiles. More Mixtiles.

I love Megan’s light-hearted, but wise, responses and this peek into the organizational life of such an experienced genealogist. I had never of Mixtiles and excited to explore more! Thank you so much, Megan, for sharing!

Succeeding at the 30 x 30 challenge

By 7 Comments

We’re at the start of a new 30 x 30 challenge (30 minutes of genealogy research for a 30 days in a row). For me, throwing down the gauntlet of the challenge is enough to get me sticking to it–it’s my challenge after all. But I wanted to share some strategies to help you feel successful about the 30 x 30 challenge when the month is over.

This is something that my co-host, Shannon Wilkinson, and I discuss on our weekly podcast Getting to Good Enough, which is about letting go of perfectionism so you can do more of what you love. Perfectionism can truly get in the way of sticking with a challenge like this. But it doesn’t have to.

I think the key is building in flexibility to allow yourself to stick with the challenge, even if you miss a day or don’t put in the full 30 minutes. As I said in the post that started this month’s challenge, I’m traveling for a week this month and I know it will be hard to carve out 30 minutes of research some days. So I’ve adapted the challenge a bit. I will feel successful if I research each day (even if it’s just for a few minutes, as it was for me in the airport yesterday), with an average of 30 minutes a day accomplished. And I’m not going to be too upset if I miss a day.

Reader Kim adapted the challenge to be 900 minutes total for the month, regardless of how many days she is able to research. Beautiful! To keep track of those minutes, she found an Evernote habit tracker template and was kind enough to follow up with a comment on last week’s post and tell us how to access it. (Start a new note, click Template in the first line of the new note, select Personal Well-Being from the sidebar, then scroll down to Habit Tracker.) This is a tool that many of us can use to keep track of the challenge. I know it will help me ensure that I average 30 minutes a day. Thank you, Kim, for taking the time to share that information!

Sometimes planning for going off track can help you find success. Things come up that might prevent you from researching some days. Accept that as inevitability and think about how you’ll handle it if it happens. There’s no need to beat yourself up. Just keep going if that happens.

I don’t want you to drop the challenge entirely if you miss a day.  You can still get so much done if you research the other days. (And if you take a moment to plan the next day’s research at the end of a session, you can jump right in at the beginning of the next session, which makes everything easier.)

This week’s episode of Getting to Good Enough is called Getting Back on Track and it’s all about gently re-starting habits that inevitably fall by the wayside. If you have a half hour, give it a listen and you’ll hear some strategies for hopping back on the wagon if you fall off.

To your success!

Getting started again after a hiatus

By 3 Comments

One of the things I love about doing daily genealogy research is that I never lose the thread of my research. I jot down next steps in my research log and then each morning I know just what to work on. No agonizing over what to research.

That’s how it’s supposed to work and how it does work when I’m in my groove. But, as I mentioned in a post earlier this week, I’ve done virtually no research for about a month. None. It makes me sad and it’s why I’m starting a 30 x 30 challenge on April 1.

Today I had a sliver of time and some motivation to get back in the saddle. But I faced a conundrum about what to work on. Most recently, I’d been working on eradicating the paper backlog I uncovered. But I’m away from home at the moment so I physically couldn’t do that.

It’s amazing to my how paralyzing the question, “What should I work on?” is. It can stop me in my tracks.

So I started thinking about the various strategies I could employ in figuring out what to work on today:

  • I could look at my research log to see where I left off.
  • I could work on processing my backlog of downloaded documents. (A small one has built up in recent months.)
  • I could open up my Source Documentation Checklist and pick up where I left off.
  • I could look at my follow-up notes, which I keep in notebooks by surname in Evernote.
  • I could choose an ancestor (any ancestor) and see what research questions I have about him/her and get started there.
  • I could look in my family-tree software (I use Reunion) and see if any of my families had a significant event today and work on them. (I wrote about that method here.)
  • If I were at home, I could play pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey and close my eyes and grab a pin on my ancestor map, then do some research on that ancestor. (That’s my ancestor map in the photo.)

Here’s the thing: it doesn’t really matter what I start working on as long as I re-engage with my research. The important thing is that I get the ball rolling and work on something. (Anything, really.) As my co-host Shannon Wilkinson and I discuss on our podcast Getting to Good Enough, perfectionism can really get in the way of doing what you love!

What I ended up doing was working on my backlog of downloaded documents, which allowed me to jump right in and make progress. It felt great!

How They Do It: Kenyatta D. Berry

By 3 Comments

You may well be familiar with professional genealogist Kenyatta D. Berry, a host of PBS’ Genealogy Roadshow. She has a new book out, The Family Tree Toolkit and when I heard her talking about it on the podcast Genealogy Happy Hour, I knew I wanted to interview her about she organizes her genealogy research. So here’s this month’s How They Do It interview. Enjoy!

How They Do It: Kenyatta BerryHow They Do It: Kenyatta D. Berry

How long have you been doing genealogy?

I have been doing genealogy research and writing for over 20 years.

What’s your favorite thing about being a genealogist?

I love helping people find their people especially descendants of enslaved individuals. Their reaction when I uncover and share some remarkable information about their family history gives me chills. It is my calling to help people uncover their family history and share their ancestors story. I have seen people literally change before my eyes on Genealogy Roadshow.

What’s your biggest challenge when it comes to organizing your genealogy?

The biggest challenge is digitizing the research I have collected over the past twenty years. I have a closet full of binders and boxes of research from when I started doing genealogy and took field trips to my ancestral homelands.

What is your favorite technology tool for genealogy?

I like using Evernote to help organize research projects, stories and my family history. I also use Dropbox to share documents with clients and family members. I have created Dropbox folders for my maternal and paternal ancestors.

If you were starting out new as a genealogist what would you do differently?

I would have cited my sources, developed better research logs and started an organizational system from the beginning.

Do you keep a research log? If so, what format?

I keep a loose version of a “research log” in Evernote for projects. When I am doing enslaved genealogy research, all of my notes are handwritten. I am a visual person and I need to track the movement of enslaved and enslavers on a blank piece of paper. Once I have analyzed my notes, then I enter them into Evernote.

How do you keep track of clues or ideas for further research?

I use notebooks and small sheets of papers to keep track of clues or ideas for further research. I type the notes into Evernote and update as needed. Transferring the notes helps me work through any outstanding questions and organize my thoughts in a logical process.

How do you go about sharing your personal research with cousins or other interested parties?

I share my personal research with my family members via family stories, biographical sketches and documents on Dropbox.

What’s the most important thing you do to prepare for a research trip?

The most important thing is to know everything about the county including the resources available at the local repositories, courthouses and archives. Also, be nice to the court clerk because it goes a long way.

What’s your biggest piece of advice to genealogists in terms of organizing their research?

Create a system that works for you and don’t be afraid to try something new if something doesn’t work. We all learn differently and as your research expands you might need to alter your system for organizing research. There isn’t a right or wrong answer for organizing your research.

Do you have a dedicated space in your home for doing genealogy research? What’s it like?

I do not have a dedicated space in your home in my apartment because I live in a one-bedroom. My research is stored in closets, cabinets and a portion of my bookshelves are dedicated to genealogy books.

Do you have anything to add?

Develop your library of genealogy and historical resources based on your interests. This will help broaden your knowledge as you continue to uncover your ancestors place in history.

I can so relate to these responses, especially what Kenyatta said there being no right way to organize and that organization systems sometimes need to change. Also, as someone who keeps a very casual research log in Evernote, I was thrilled to read that Kenyatta also keep a loose version of a log there. For more information from Kenyatta, I encourage you to check out her book, The Family Tree Toolkit: A Comprehensive Guide to Uncovering Your Ancestry and Researching Genealogy.