Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

NARA 2018 Virtual Genealogy Fair is tomorrow!

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I almost missed telling you about the 2018 Virtual Genealogy Fair offered (free of charge) by the National Archives. It’s tomorrow, October 24. This is the sixth year for the conference, offered by webcast. It’s a wonderful resource.

You can read the lineup, with detailed descriptions of the sessions and links to handouts, here. Detailed descriptions of the sessions are posted here, which is also where handouts will be posted when they’re available. (Classes are marked either Beginner” or “Experienced.”) There will be six one-hour sessions, bookended by opening and closing remarks. The even starts at 10 am eastern and ends at 4.

I’m busy with a client tomorrow, so I was thrilled to read that I don’t have to watch live. The webcast will be available on YouTube to watch later. You don’t have to register.

Special thanks to my cousin, Jerry Brown, who alerted me to this year’s conference. It had flown beneath my radar this year.

Full transparency: Getting rid of my backlog

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As I mentioned in my Searcher vs researcher post at the end of August, I was overwhelmed by the documents I had downloaded over the past few months and not processed. I knew there was information in those documents that I needed to analyze and add to my Reunion software. Letting them languish without analysis was not smart. And it was stressing me out.

So I vowed not to search for new information until I’d processed all those documents. There were 103 of them, including 30 loose documents; 49 documents in a Montana folder (most of them newspaper articles) about my father’s uncle, Harry Adams (1895-1977), who was a legendary coach at the University of Montana; and 24 19th-century deeds for my Adams ancestors.

I worked diligently on this backlog. Every research session was devoted to it. I loved the focus that this project gave me. I wasn’t able to completely stop searching, but I did process any documents I downloaded in the same session in which I downloaded them, so I didn’t add to my backlog. To keep me going, I kept a spreadsheet of my progress.

I was out of town visiting my father the last week of September and didn’t do any document processing (except on my plane rides) but I started up when I returned. On October 2, I declared the project finished! But here’s a big caveat: I didn’t process the deeds. I couldn’t face them, because they need transcription and I just wasn’t up to tedium of that task. I’ve shifted my research focus from the Adams family to the Rasco family and so I gave myself permission to let those deeds lie dormant in my Adams surname folder until I start researching Adams line again.

So I ended up processing 79 documents in this burst. I feel good about this decision and about this whole project. It’s great to have that backlog virtually eliminated. I’m newly dedicated to not letting it build up again–I’m cognizant of the fact that I need stop searching and start processing well before the end of a research session so that I stay on top of these documents.

For the most part, when I came up with new research possibilities while processing my backlog, I made a note in one of my follow-up notebooks (I have follow-up notebooks, organized by surname in Evernote) and now I’m exploring those possibilities, focusing on the Rascos, which has been fun.

Staying focused in my research is a something I deal with constantly. Finishing this project makes me feel more focused and on top of my research. That’s a great feeling!

Using Family Search to find images referenced on Ancestry (screencast)

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Today I was doing some research on Ancestry. (I’ve finished my backlog project and have lifted my ban on searching–more on that in a future post.) I was looking for a death certificate for my grandmother’s sister whom I had just learned through Find A Grave had died at the age of six, in 1922.

A simple Birth/Marriage/Death records search produced a collection called Washington, Select Death Certificates, 1907-1960, but when I clicked on it, it said “No Image Text-only collection.” (A picture of that screen is at the top of this post.) I saw that there was a FHL film number, so I went to Family Search to try to track down the document.

I was successful in finding an image of the death certificate, though I had to jump through a few hoops. After I successfully downloaded and processed it, I decided to do a screencast of the process, in case it help someone here.

Here’s the screencast:

A quick summary is that I searched on the film number in the catalog at Family Search, then when I got another No Image Available message there, I drilled down further to the actual microfilm number mentioned on Ancestry and did another search. That brought up the image. If it hadn’t, I would have gone to the image number (listed in the initial search result at Family Search) in that digitized microfilm. Bottom line: don’t give up if you’re told an image isn’t available!

You can find more information on using Family Search’s card catalog in this post from a year ago: Using the card catalog to find elusive documents on Family Search. And if you’re interested in how I processed that death certificate after I downloaded it, check out the blog post How I process a downloaded document.

Update on my backlog busting

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A month ago today, I wrote a post called searcher vs. researcher, in which I talked about how I’d accumulated a backlog of documents I’d downloaded but done nothing with. I vowed that until I had processed that backlog (using my digital workflow) I would not search for any new documents.

Then I had to amend that vow a little when I realized how difficult it was for me to completely stop searching. I decided that I would search on occasion, but I would process anything I downloaded so that I wouldn’t add to the backlog

Since I started this process, I’ve been diligent about chipping away at my backlog, I’m happy to report. In my informal Evernote research log, I note which documents I processed and the day’s contribution to the backlog reduction.

I even created a simple spreadsheet (of course) that I store in Evernote and update after each session. That little burst of accomplishment keeps me going. Today’s spreadsheet is pictured above; you can click on it to make it bigger if you’re interested.

As of today, September 25, I have processed 62 of the 103 documents in my backlog. I have just 41 to go and am looking forward to the great feeling of finishing. All along, I’ve been making follow up notes (in Evernote), so I’ll have plenty of searching to do when I finish. I’m going to try hard not to let a backlog build up again!

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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.