Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

How They Do It: Barbara Schmidt

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I’m delighted to present a How They Do It interviewee from Europe! Barbara Schmidt is a communication specialist and genealogy researcher in Frankfurt, Germany, whom I met at RootsTech in 2017. She’s active in social media for both her work and her genealogy. Her blog Connecting the Worlds is doing exactly that: Connecting her worlds of genealogy, corporate history (she is a member of the historical association of Deutsche Bank), and everything around being and living digital including Working Out Loud.

Barbara speaks at genealogy events on topics like how to connect with other researchers through forums, social media, blogs, and how to travel safely through this new digital world. She blogs in English and German with the same overall topics but different angles.

How They Do It: Barbara SchmidtHow They Do It: Barbara Schmidt

How long have you been doing genealogy?

I started with researching my family tree when I was about 20 years old. That makes it now 25 years, It’s amazing, how time flies. Sometimes it feels like I just started. There are still moments today where I act and research like a rookie.

What’s your favorite thing about being a genealogist?

When I started I just wanted to get an overview of my big family at the usual family gatherings like weddings, baptisms and funerals. As a child I never really understood who was who and who belonged to whom. All those aunts and uncles and siblings of my grandparents who were called aunt or uncle. All of them having three names didn’t help either. But throughout the years my motivation to keep going is coming from the small and big stories I learnt about my family.

And my biggest highlight is always when I “meet” new family members. I re-connected my father with his cousin after 42 years, that was really emotional for me and his cousin’s wife. They behaved like they had just seen each other the week before. It was so typical northern German – not a lot of words.

I learnt about a family branch that emigrated to the United States and got in contact with one of the descendants. And just later I realized, he is a real cousin of my mom. Or I met a distant cousin of my Dad last year who was on a Germany visit from Australia. Those are the big moments. But there are lots and lots small ones. Too many to mention them all.

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

I tend to re-invent my organizing system every couple of years. I haven’t really found THE system yet. I always want to go digital because I cannot stand paper. It takes up too much space and I always get lost in the paper piles and files. The bigger my family tree and the more documents I had to store the more I got overwhelmed with finding the “perfect” system. Until I realized there is no perfection in organizing my genealogy. I had to find MY system. That took about 20 years until I found something that really worked.

What is your favorite technology tool for genealogy?

Definitely my scanner! I mentioned before I want to go digital. Which means I either only order digital copies of documents or if I receive paper copies I scan them and destroy the paper. Only copies of course. Originals get stored in specific acid free binders. No paper clips, no glue, no rubber bands. [I asked Barbara what kind of scanner she uses and it’s an HP MP500 flatbed/sheetfed scanner. — Janine]

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

I would ask more questions and would research more within my own family when they are still alive. I spent way too much money ordering documents from archives to receive information which would have been easily available if I would have just asked.

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

Upon your recommendation I actually started using a research log but I don’t really keep up with them, to be honest. Again, I haven’t really found a system yet how to really incorporate it into my research. I tried various templates, on- and offline. In the cloud or on my desktop but I find myself not really using them. Although I really understand that they are helpful. But I’m not there yet.

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

I use Evernote a lot. I take notes of ideas not only for further research but also for my blog. I travel a lot, therefore I need something that synchronizes on all my devices like notebook, smartphone and tablet. I am also a heavy user of audio notes on my smartphone. For me that is the best way to set reminders for myself when a thought crosses my mind.

How do you go about sharing your personal research with cousins or other interested parties?
 
Unfortunately, my family is not really interested in my family research, except for my direct family like my parents and some of my siblings. But for interested parties I share my family tree online via Ancestry and wikitree. I am all for sharing and exchanging information. I make one exception though and that is pictures. Most important for me when we talk about a platform to share is the possibility to synchronize on all my devices. That’s why I work with the ancestry app.

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

Portable battery chargers (powerbanks)! No kidding. When I started going digital in archives it happened more than once that I had to stop because I had no way to charge my devices. Now I always carry at least 2 powerbanks with me and make sure I have all the charging cables. I have a special tupperware for those. I always check for opening hours of archives. You never know what changes there might have been since the last visit. Another important thing? Comfortable shoes 😃

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

Don’t expect perfection. There is none. Find a simple system that works for you and don’t change it too often. Just because someone tells you of something different that works for him/her that doesn’t mean you have to change your way of organizing. If it’s not broken – don’t fix it. Leave enough flexibility for your family tree to grow. My first mistake was to make it too specific with colour coding and filing. It became way too complicated as my family tree grew.

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

Not anymore. I just moved houses three weeks ago. I still have to find my spot in my new apartment which is a bit smaller than the one I previously had. But that is good in a way. It forces me to sort out everything which I don’t  need and to digitize even more. I have to downsize my storage and filing.

Thank you so much, Barbara, for your wise words. Your caution about not chasing perfection in a genealogy organizing system particularly resonated with me. It’s nice to see that genealogy research and organizing seems universal no matter where in the world you are!

 

How They Do It: Donna Cox Baker, The Golden Egg Genealogist

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The next interviewee for my How They Do It series is Donna Cox Baker, the blogger behind The Golden Egg Genealogist and the co-founder of the Beyond Kin Project. Donna has a PhD in history and is editor-in-chief of Alabama Heritage magazine. Her first book, Views of the Future State: Afterlife Beliefs in the Deep South, was published in January 2018. One of my readers suggested I invited Donna to participate in this series and I’m so glad! I found myself nodding in agreement as I read her insightful responses. Enjoy.

How They Do It: Donna Cox Baker shares how she organizes her genealogyHow They Do It: Donna Cox Baker

How long have you been doing genealogy?

I first got hooked on family history around 1986 at the public library in Fort Wayne, Indiana, where I lived briefly. Far away from family for the first time in my life, a local advertisement for “family history” caught my eye, and I was captivated. Since then, I have gone through long periods when I had no time for it, especially when I was pursuing graduate education while working full-time. As soon as I put the last touches on my PhD dissertation, though, I pulled out the old dusty genealogy box, and it was back to my first love.

What’s your favorite thing about being a genealogist?



At the risk of sounding corny, it is a spiritual thing for me. Oh, I love the thrill of the hunt, like everybody else. I love filling in the blanks that time has left. But there is something mystical-magical about reaching back to restore to memory the people without whom I would not be. It is an act of gratitude for those who came before, and an act of service to those yet to come. There is a grounding quality to the act of writing in birth dates and death dates again and again, person after person. You become truly conscious of the brevity of each life and want to make every day count.

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

In the highest stress years of my career, I finally realized that I was psychologically allergic to paper. Piles and piles of sheets to remind me perpetually that the work was never done. That things had been forgotten. That I would never find what I needed. After a tornado wiped out 7,000 structures in my town and all the hoarded materials in them in 2011, I determined never to depend on paper again. Had the storm shifted two blocks north, every piece of paper my team had collected over 25 years would have been gone in three seconds. I make every effort to be paperless—for my sanity and the security of my research. The challenge, then, is in doing that in a smart way.

What is your favorite technology tool for genealogy?

My favorite tool is the one that got me through a PhD dissertation without giving up: Zotero. This free tool, developed by George Mason University, allows me to have everything I would have stored in paper files with me, wherever there is WiFi. I love it more than the unstructured tools like Evernote and OneNote, because it blends structure with free-form capabilities. It allows me to find a source online and click once to put all of the bibliographic information into its database. It can extract every comment and highlight I make in a PDF. It’s amazing and is the subject of my next book. I’ve written a number of blog posts about it on The Golden Egg Genealogist.

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

I would get formal training. I was arrogant enough to think I didn’t need it for the first couple of decades. But then I went to the Institute for Genealogy and Historical Research. I took the beginner’s class, just in case I had missed things along the way. And BOY had I missed things along the way. I had been making mistakes that rendered whole branches of my family tree questionable. This summer will be my fourth trip to IGHR.

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



Zotero replaces that for me. It gives me everything the traditional logs give, but in a much more efficient format. If I was doing genealogy for others, I might need a log to keep up with time spent, but I don’t have that need. With Zotero, I know what sources I consulted, where I found them, and what I extracted. It keeps up with the date I first added the source record and the last time I modified it—the only two dates I really care about. And unlike the traditional research logs, I only have to add the source and repository information once—no matter how many times I might return to that source and gather new information. In my notes, I make a habit of including a statement about what I was looking for at any given time—say, “All Mayberrys,” or “Ransom Payne.”

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



Again, Zotero is my hero. I have a master To Do folder, in which I add subfolders for places I might need to visit to do future research. As I encounter a library catalog record or some other notice of a source I want to see at that repository, I create the Zotero source record and drag it into the folder for the repository. That way, I’m collecting a to-do list for a repository and have it waiting when I have the time to make that trip. In fact, if I happen to find myself at a repository unexpectedly—say a meeting ends early at the state archives, and I have an hour—I can find a computer there, look up my to-do list in Zotero’s cloud, and get to work. I am also able to drag and drop the same source record into folders for the person or family I’m researching. So the record exists only once, but I can find it in multiple places.

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



I give them access to my Ancestry tree, which is syncing with Family Tree Maker. Because I still have some of that old questionable research that I mentioned in my largest tree, I keep that one private. I caution the curious cousin up front that they need to check everything behind me. My research is a clue, not the gospel. I have a couple of public trees that represent more recent (post-IGHR) work. I’ve had little time to work on the general family tree there. I am spending most of my time on a tree that is a slaveholding branch of my family that serves as a prototype for the Beyond Kin Project, which represents our method of documenting enslaved populations.

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

I go through any available catalogs or lists of what the local repositories have, and then determine what specific research questions I need to try to answer. I also try to determine which of the local records might be available online through FamilySearch or Ancestry or are in a library in my vicinity. I want to spend my time on the sources I will not find any other way. I make sure I have my smart phone and laptop and the ability to keep both charged. My phone becomes my scanner, and I am often keying things directly into Zotero, as I work on-site.

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

Get rid of the paper. You cannot carry it with you on your research trip with any ease. If a piece of paper mentions twenty different people, will you make twenty copies of the page to file in twenty folders? And here’s another really important reason to break the paper habit. Your descendants will not want your file cabinets and boxes. If you depend on paper, your research may stop with you. Don’t let that happen. Now for those who have twenty years of paper piled up and wonder how they could possibly go paperless now, I say start today with a paperless ethic. Make everything you work on from now on paperless, and slowly work backward through the paper mountains in your home, scanning them as you are able.

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



The beauty of paperless genealogy is that I can do 99% of my work at home on a laptop. Everything I’ve gathered has been scanned and can be accessed there (being backed up faithfully to the cloud at all times). I have a great little office in my house, but it feels too much like my day job. I usually work in an armchair with headphones on, so I can enjoy the company of my husband and cat-children. When I retire someday, maybe I’ll be willing to sit at a desk again. But more likely I’ll want to be on a lounge chair on the deck.

 Now all of this is possible because I’m not a person who wants to be the keeper of my family’s precious documents and photographs. If you are that person, you have to be able to preserve things in acid-free boxes, fire-proof safes. And I salute that person, but it will not be me.

I hadn’t heard of Zotero before hearing about it from Donna and now I’m excited to check it out. Her enthusiasm for it is contagious! I’m also intrigued by the Beyond Kin Project and can’t wait to learn more. And, finally, I agree completely with Donna about paper. (I love her phrase “psychologically allergic to paper.”) Eliminating paper creates such freedom and her advice to start with from this point forward with going paperless then chip away at the backlog is spot on. Thank you, Donna, for taking the time to answer these questions!

How They Do It: Lisa Louise Cooke

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The latest addition to my How They Do It series of Q&As is with Lisa Louise Cooke, CEO of Genealogy Gems. Lisa is a prolific podcaster (she hosts both the Genealogy Gems podcast and the Family Tree Magazine podcast), author (her books include The Genealogist’s Google Toolbox and Mobile Genealogy), as well as a blogger and speaker. Lisa has an immense amount of genealogy knowledge and when she interviewed me recently for the Family Tree Magazine podcast, I asked her to do a How They Do It interview. I was thrilled when she agreed!

Since it’s a new year, I’ve changed up the questions just a little. Enjoy reading Lisa’s terrific answers!

How They Do It: Lisa Louise CookeHow They Do It: Lisa Louise Cooke

How long have you been doing genealogy?

I got bit by the genealogy bug when I was 8 years old. I was the only kid in my class spending her allowance on death certificates!

What’s your favorite thing about being a genealogist?

It’s quite a challenge to pick just one favorite aspect of genealogy. But I think it would have to be working the puzzle and piecing together the past. I thrive on the challenge, and particularly enjoy using technology in creative ways to accomplish my goals. A close second is pulling my ancestors back from obscurity. When you consider it only take a generation or two for someone to completely be forgotten, it’s incredibly rewarding to ensure that doesn’t happen.

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

It’s changed a lot in the last few years. It used to be paper posed the biggest challenge. But these days it’s definitely photo storage. Not only are we digitizing more of our past photos, we are taking photos of today’s memories at a break-neck rate. Those images are the family history of the future. And while technology offers answers, it’s constantly evolving. So, the method we thought was a good solution just a few years ago may already look outdated. I think most folks never dreamed ten years ago that they would have the mountain of digital images they have today.

What is your favorite technology tool for genealogy?

Land sakes, that’s a hard one for me! Honestly, my favorite tool is the one that is solving today’s challenge. But generally speaking, it’s still Google. And as I say in my book The Genealogist’s Google Toolbox, it’s really a toolbox of tools rather than just one tool, though they do come from one source, Google. On a daily basis, it’s Google search; nearly every day it’s Google Books; and Google Earth follows closely behind. Their power is only limited by your imagination.

These days many folks think “oh, I know how to Google!” But I find in most cases they are just scratching the surface. Like all tech, Google is constantly evolving. So, to really maximize it, you have to stay current and not rely just on what you did even a year ago.

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

I’m fortunate, in that at a very young age I interviewed my oldest relatives. I also cited my sources. I find that those are the most common regrets genealogists have. For me, if I had the opportunity to do something differently, it would be to have taken more photos with my grandmother, and to have audio recorded the interviews.

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

I use Evernote to track items I find along the way that I want to set aside (so I don’t get off track) and return to later. But it’s not just how you track them. Success really comes from scheduling dedicated time to return to them. If you know in your heart of hearts you’re never going to do that, you’ll be tempted to jump down the rabbit hole right then and there. But if you regularly schedule “BSO Time” as I call it (Bright Shiny Objects) on your calendar and stick to it, you will trust yourself, and resist the temptations along the way. When it comes to BSOs found in books, I track those in Google Books’ “My Library” feature.

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

Video. Period. Successfully sharing genealogy is all about telling your ancestor’s stories in a way that speaks to your intended audience: Non-Genealogists! Most people get resistance and eye-rolling to hearing about their genealogy because they want to share the way they like to share, not the way a non-genealogist would be able to appreciate. Plus, video is the perfect tool for sharing online through social media – and that’s where your family is hanging out!

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

Do it as you go. And whatever method you choose to use to organize your stuff, do it consistently!

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

Lisa’s office bookshelf

I have a separate office in our home that is devoted to genealogy and all the roles that genealogy plays in my life, personally and professionally with Genealogy Gems. It’s comfy, carpeted (which I need for podcasting), features a bright sunny window, a wall of book shelves and a walk-in closet. Most importantly, it’s decorated with anything and everything that inspires me and makes me happy. I spend too much time in there to not make it a haven.

I love the idea of BSO time: scheduled time where you explore the bright shiny objects you found along the way. What a great way to keep from being distracted. I’m also inspired to use video to share family stories. That’s an excellent idea.

Thank you, Lisa, for sharing your insights!

Themes from 2017’s How They Do It series

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I spent an enjoyable hour or so going through all 12 of this year’s How They Do It interviews to see whether there were common themes that emerged among all the interviews. I wasn’t surprised to learn that there were!

Here are the 2017 participants (in chronological order), with links to their interviews:

There were a lot of commonalities among these successful genealogists. Most of them, for example, keep their data digitally, rather than on paper. Staying on top of paper was a bigger struggle than organizing digital files. Almost all wish they had crafted a source citation for all information when they first started out. (Don’t we all?) The thrill of the hunt, the problem solving, the discoveries and/or the connections were the favorite aspects of genealogy research with everyone.

The piece of advice that virtually everyone offered is no surprise. Cite your sources. Other themes that emerged include Keep a research log (and note unsuccessful searches as well as successful ones). Organize as you go — don’t let a backlog build up. Use an organizing system that works for you. And in order to avoid being overwhelmed, several of the interviewees suggested you focus on one line or one family at a time.

There was so much wisdom in these interviews that I don’t have space to quote them all. But here are some of my favorite quotes from the interviews:

My philosophy on organizing things right away is this: the more you put it off or delay it the more difficult it will be. That time spent reorganizing could be better spent researching for ancestors. Lack of organization basically squanders your precious time. (Thomas MacEntee)

I’ve learned that “getting organized” can become an all-consuming goal if we get stuck in the mindset of finding the “perfect” system or solution. I do better when I remind myself that progress is better than perfection; fix what isn’t working and move forward. (Denise Levenick)

The Internet is a bittersweet trap. You will never solve your tough genealogical problems by using only online sources. There is so much more out there that will never see the light of digitization. (Michael Lacopo)

I would encourage people not to make their systems too complicated. If another researcher or a family member ever has to go through your papers later and it isn’t clear how things are organized, that’s when research ends up getting tossed. Simple is good. (Amy Johnson Crow)

When we freely and openly share, family history becomes this truly collaborative environment that helps us make discoveries quicker and helps us be more accurate. (Crista Cowan)

In 2017, I basically asked the same questions of all interviewees. I’m thinking I should change up the questions for 2018. Help me out. What would you like to hear from the experts? And do you have folks you’d like me to interview for the series in 2018? Please share!