Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

Quick Tip #38: Ask yourself open questions

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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 now and then on a small topic that pops into my head. This one can save you time and effort. 

Ask yourself open questions

It’s always a good idea to start a research session with a question that you want answered. And it can pay to be careful how you phrase those questions.

Rather than asking yourself a confirming question like “Was my great grandmother Alice Ruberson born in Kansas?” it’s better to ask an open question, like “Where was my great grandmother Alice born?”

The reason for this is confirmation bias, the tendency to interpret new evidence as confirmation of one’s existing beliefs or theories (according to the Oxford English Dictionary). As Amy Johnson Crow explained in this morning’s Wikitree Symposium, when you think you know the answer, you’re likely to stop researching once you find evidence that confirms it. But when you ask an open question, you tend to search more extensively.

Next time you come up with a research question, consider how you’re phrasing it.

Photo by Sam Dan Truong on Unsplash

Sharing with confidence

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I had a wonderful conversation yesterday with Stacy Julian for her podcast, Exactly Enough Time. We talked about family history, organizing and sharing our family stories. The episode will be published later this month and I will definitely post a link.

Part of our conversation has stuck with me and I wanted to share it here. We talked a little about balancing the desire to share our research with the need to make sure what we share is accurate. In my opinion, it’s important to be confident about the accuracy of your research before sharing it. That doesn’t mean you need to write a fully-sourced history before you can share anything. It just means that what you share should be sourced and reliable.

Here’s what I do to make sure my research can be trusted:

I ensure that every fact that is entered into my database in Reunion has a source attached to it. And I look at every source critically before entering it into my database.

With those two procedures in place, I know that I can share everything in my database with confidence.

I encourage you to let go of the idea that you can’t share any of your research until it’s “finished” (whatever that means). Instead, just make sure your research is reliable so you can share any of it with confidence.

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash.

Baby stepping my way back into research

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I don’t think I’ve ever felt this disconnected from my genealogy research in the ten years since I started this blog. The death of my father on August 20, coupled with the overwhelming amount of work I’m responsible for as his executor and the need to run my organizing business (I’m so grateful for my amazing employees!), means that family history research fell to the bottom of my priority list.

But I really miss doing research. I miss feeling connected to my ancestors. And I miss feeling connected to my readers. So today I’m figuring out a gentle plan to get back into the swing of it.

Here’s my guiding principle: Baby steps. I’m creating a tiny task list of things I can do to dip my toe back into my genealogy pool without feeling overwhelmed or like it’s too time-consuming to start. Here’s what I’ve come up with so far. I’ve purposely kept the list short so it won’t feel overwhelming, but I give myself permission to add to it whenever I want:

  • Process one document in my backlog
  • Process one document related to my father’s passing (so far all I’ve put into my database was his death certificate, which was a little painful)
  • Pick one ancestor in my database and see what documents I’m missing
  • Search for one document from that missing documents list
  • Send 15 minutes inventorying the family archive of objects from my father and aunt (who moved into a nursing home)

In the last month, I’ve just been stymied by the thought, “I need to do some genealogy research.” Now, with this list, I feel like I can actually take action when I have that thought.

This feels like huge progress and I’ll post an update about whether it’s working. Wish me luck.

If you’ve been in this position, I would certainly be interested learning how you got back on the saddle with your research!

Quick Tip #37: Take the time to read about a collection

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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 now and then on a small topic that pops into my head. This one can save you time and effort.

Take the time to read about a collection

It can take some discipline to take the time to read about a collection when you’re researching. But these notes can be so valuable. They keep you from making false assumptions about the information you’re looking at. They might even solve a mystery.

Case in point: I found a collection on Ancestry of Appointments of U.S. Postmasters, 1832-1971. I found ancestors’ names in the collection but the columns on the pages lacked headers. Instead of trying to guess what each column meant, I read the information about the collection beneath the search box and source information. It helped me make sense of a fairly confusing set of pages.

It doesn’t take long to read about a collection and it can be time well spent!

Photo by Sam Dan Truong on Unsplash