Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

It’s my 3rd blogiversary!

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happyblogiversarylgJune 14 marked three years since I published my first post here. (That post was called My quest to learn more about my family history.) Time goes by so quickly. I am so glad I decided to start this blog, for lots of reasons. It has done a wonderful job of helping me stay focused on my family history research. It has prompted me to go to genealogy conferences. It has brought me closer to family. And it has helped me make new friends.

The most popular post on the blog so far has been Reading hard-to-read gravestones, in which I discuss using aluminum foil to make a gravestone legible. I had read about that technique elsewhere and documented my use of it, with my husband’s help, on a family cemetery trip. That particular post has gone my small-scale version of viral: In the last two days, it has been viewed over 5,000 times!

Speaking of statistics, in my first two blogiversary posts, I gathered and published a few statistics. In the interest of consistency, I’ll do it again:

In the third year of this blog:

  • I wrote 72 posts (74 in year two, 79 posts in the first year).
  • There were a total of 84,270 views (35,198 the second year, 6,424 in year one).
  • I had 245 comments, about half of which were my own (compared to 316 and 106 comments in past years).
  • 272 people subscribe to the blog (that number was 160 a year ago and 82 on 6/14/13)

So it looks like I’ve remained somewhat steady in terms of the number of blog posts (though I would have guessed that I’d posted more!). Pageviews and subscribers are growing. In the 2014 calendar year, I had about 55,000 views and I set a goal this year of 100,000 views. I’m on track for that, which is great. (I love having goals.)

I’ve had the opportunity to meet several blog readers at conferences this year and that has been so wonderful! (I was even recognized by a couple of people at the NGS conference!) I hope to meet more of you in the coming year.

Thank you so much for reading this blog. If there are any topics you’d like me to address in Year Four, please let me know!

What’s your biggest organizing challenge?

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questionmarkI polled readers last month to find out what you’d like to read here. The top vote getter was “Organizing tips and tricks.” I’m in my tenth year as a professional organizer, so, as you can imagine, I have a lot of organizing tricks up my sleeve. But in thinking about what to share with you, I realized it would be really helpful to know your biggest challenges with regard to organizing your family history research.

So can you please help me help you by letting me know what you struggle with?

Is it setting up a filing system? Keeping track of sources? Finding things on your hard drive? A cluttered genealogy workspace? No genealogy workspace? Finding time to do research? Not letting genealogy research take over your life? A backlog of stuff that needs to be organized?

Please don’t limit yourself to those suggestions. Just post a comment stating any and all genealogy-related organizing challenges so I can try to address them in future posts.

Thank you!

Paper vs electronic: What a difference two years makes!

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paperpilecroppedI just took another gander at a blog post I wrote on August 16, 2012, called How I organize my family history research. I still organize my research papers the same way I described in that post–my filing system has withstood the test of time.

But what really jumped out at me was this paragraph:

…I have to tell you that I’m a paper person. I know I could (and perhaps should) save documents, like census images, as pdfs and just organize them on my computer. But I really like printing them out and keeping them in files. So that’s what I do.

I’m pretty happy to report that times have changed. I’ve created an electronic file system that allows me to find  documents on my computer easily (though I’m still discovering files that haven’t been properly named or filed). So now I don’t feel the need to print everything and put them in files. It’s positively liberating.

That means my files are available wherever my laptop is. (Or my iPad, since much of my genealogy research is also stored in Dropbox.) I can do research from any room in the house, or any room in the world, for that matter.

Back in May, I extolled the virtues of going paperless. I am so happy that my need to print is vanishing!

Yes, my paper filing system is working well. But these days, I use it only for retrieving documents I filed there in the past. I’m just not adding to it. And that’s okay by me!

 

Mid-quarter progress report

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My strategy for focusing my genealogy efforts in 2014At the end of last year, I devised a scheme for 2014 in which I’d focus on one of my family lines per quarter. The idea was to keep my research focused and to have a list of organizing-related tasks for each line that I’d want to have completed by the end of the quarter.

We’re just past the half way point of the quarter, and I thought it was time I took stock of how this scheme was working out.

First, I will say that it has been really helpful having a single line (this quarter, it’s my father’s father’s line, the Adamses) that I’m focusing on. It’s diminished the overwhelming feeling I sometimes get when I think about getting started on a research project.

(Another big help in keeping me focused has been my Research Tracker, part of the Family History Organizer custom notebook I developed for Springpad, which you can download into your Springpad account.)

In re-reading that blog post today, I realized that I’ve doing a pretty good job on the research-related aspects of my quarterly goals:

  • Fill in collateral relatives on my family tree in Reunion
  • Search for sources for unsourced data provided to me by cousins
  • Go up at least one generation in verified information

I haven’t accomplished them all yet, but I’ve been making slow and steady progress.

Where I’m falling behind is on the ambitious list of quarterly organizing tasks I’d put together, namely:

  • Fill in the gaps on my progress tracker
  • Make sure my surname files for that line are organized on my hard drive
  • Ensure that everything in my paper files for that line is also organized on my hard drive
  • Attach photos to my family tree in Reunion

So for the rest of the month, I think I’m going to get back to marrying my electronic and paper files, and see what photos I have that I can attach to my family tree. And I’ll pull out my progress tracker and make sure it’s up to date.

What I like about this quarterly plan is that it’s adding a little urgency to the activities, by providing a deadline after which I switch focus. And it’s helping me clear an organizing backlog. At year’s end, my electronic files should be in a great shape, I should know where I stand, and I will have made progress on my research. Even if I don’t accomplish all of that, I will have made progress and I can continue moving forward next year.

Of course, time will tell. But I will keep you posted on my progress!

Join the mailing list!

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.