Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

Quick Tip #16: Don’t forget about your local library

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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 one’s a good reminder.

Don’t forget about your local library!

Here in St. Louis, our city and county library systems have some remarkable resources for genealogists. Both have genealogy rooms that I’ve enjoyed researching in. And they have expert staff members who provide great assistance. All of it’s free of charge.

Of course, the pandemic has made using the local library difficult. Here, branches have been closed off and on. The St. Louis County library genealogy room has been closed since the pandemic began. I traditionally rely on it to give me access to those documents from Family Search that are available only if you’re using the wifi system of an affiliate library. The county library has generously extended its wifi reach to its parking lot. Last week, I parked there and was able to download some documents from Family Search. Maybe that’s something you can do at your library too.

Even if your local library branch is closed, I urge you to check to see whether they are offering access to online databases or perhaps are allowing you to consult remotely with librarians. They may have expanded online resources because of the pandemic. Here in St. Louis, for example, the library edition of Ancestry.com is now available to county library card holders at home (while the genealogy room is closed). If you don’t have a library card, now’s a good time to get one!

Photo by Sam Dan Truong on Unsplash

Quick Tip #15: Resist the urge to print

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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. This one changed my genealogy life.

Resist the urge to print

As a professional organizer, I know what a problem paper clutter can be. And I know how hard it can be to access unfiled paper (and so much paper is unfiled!). So I am a huge proponent of not printing genealogy documents I find online. Instead, I encourage you to download and file them.

The key to feeling confident about downloading, rather than printing, is to have a reliable file-naming protocol and folder structure so that you can find the documents. Mine is detailed in this post, but yours might be different. That’s great, as long as it works for you. When you download and file digitally, rather than print and file or put into binders, your documents are always at your fingertips when you’re at your computer, even if you’re at a library or repository. It can be a mindset shift, but I think it’s worth it.

It’s important to mention, as was brought up in the comments to this post, that it’s absolutely essential to backup your hard drive if you’re going to store your documents digitally. I wrote about this in my last quick tip.

For extensive information on going paperless in your genealogy research, check out the Paperless Genealogy Guide I wrote with scanning expert Brooks Duncan, available for purchase at his website, DocumentSnap.

Photo by Sam Dan Truong on Unsplash

You got this!

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I’m a big fan of the Yoga with Adriene YouTube channel. I’ve been doing at-home yoga via free videos hosted by Adriene Mishler for just over two years. I haven’t missed a day since April 1, 2020. This month I’m following her February calendar (called Bridge), doing the video she’s selected for the day.

Why am I mentioning this on my genealogy blog? Today’s video was called Yoga for Self Doubt. It was a lovely practice with an encouraging and empowering message. I love Adriene so much, I often ask myself how I can be more like her. I walked off the yoga mat today with the intention of being more empowering for my clients and the people who read my blogs. So I decided to simply express encouragement and empowerment on the blog today.

If you came to this website because you were confused or overwhelmed about how to organize your genealogy research, I’m here to tell you that as challenging as it might feel, you can do it. It it feels confusing, just get started and the confusion may clear up for you.

Try to let go of any fear that you’ll do it wrong. First of all, there isn’t a right way to organize your genealogy; there’s just the way that works for you. Secondly if you start on a path that doesn’t work for you, you can always tweak it.

Sometimes it can be helpful to do a do-over. Purchase some software, and start entering in your family tree, including only verified facts and citing your sources to back up those facts. That’s what I did when I abandoned my over 100 pages of hand-written (unsourced) five-generation pedigree charts about ten years ago. I take great comfort in knowing I have a solid tree (and I’m improving my source citations and gleaning more information as I work on my source documentation project this month).

If genealogy ever gets you down, please don’t beat yourself up. Remember you’re fully capable of getting back on course. Take a class. Sign up for next week’s Rootstech virtual conference so you can have access to hundreds of free educational sessions for a year. Keep reading genealogy blogs. Use social media to get advice or find cousins who can help.

If you have specific organizing questions related to genealogy, feel free to reach out to me via email and I’ll see if I can help.

Genealogy is an amazing hobby, but I know from experience it’s easy to feel bogged down or overwhelmed. Please don’t feel discouraged. You got this!

Quick Tip #14: Back up your data!

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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. This one is brief but very important.

Back up your data

If you’ve embraced digital file organization, as I have, it’s absolutely imperative to back up your data. And it’s a good idea to do it in multiple ways. I store my genealogy source documents on my hard drive and I back up my hard drive continuously through Backblaze, an automated cloud-based service. (That’s a referral link; I’ll be compensated if you use the link to sign up for BackBlaze.) I’ve been very happy with Backblaze but there are other cloud-based backup services, like Carbonite and CrashPlan, that you might consider.

I also automatically back up hourly to an external hard drive via the Time Machine program on my Mac. (I keep my external hard drive plugged in via a hub whenever my computer is at my desk, which is most of the time.) Finally, my Reunion database is stored on Dropbox, so that I can access it, via ReunionTouch, on my phone. So that’s another place the files exist. I have confidence back up system and, best of all, it’s all automatic–I never have to think about it!

Those are just the ways I back up. There are lots of other ways to do it. The important thing is to feel confident that if your hard drive failed or your computer were stolen or damaged you would not lose your precious genealogy data. If you’re not as confident, I urge you to take some steps to explore how you might improve your situation!

Photo by Sam Dan Truong on Unsplash

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When you first join the list, I’ll send you a few emails to help you organize your family history. After that you’ll hear from me at the end of every month when I send an email with links to that month’s posts. And every now and then, I’ll let you know when I have something special to promote.