Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

Update on the Livescribe pen

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In a comment on a recent blog post, reader Maria Tello mentioned that she would like to hear an update from me on how I use my Livescribe pen for genealogy.

The Livescribe pen is a smart pen with a voice recorder in it that links the recording with the notes you are taking. So you can touch an area of your notes (taken in its special notebook) and hear what was being said when you took the note.

I bought my Livescribe Echo in 2013 and enthusiastically used it to take notes at conferences. In my blog post about it, I mentioned the ways I could see using it for genealogy.

True confession: The Livescribe pen is gathering dust in my desk drawer. It’s lost its luster for me. I realized that I never took the time to go back and listen to the recorded notes, which made the notes I did take less valuable (since I took fewer notes, assuming I’d listen to them).

I really do think it could be a very valuable for doing oral history interviews. I just haven’t used it that way.

It’s worth noting that since I bought my Livescribe Echo, the company has the Livescribe 3, which links with an iPhone/iPad app (as well as Android devices). It uses your device’s voice recorder, which makes the pen smaller. And the notes you take in your notebook are transmitted to the device. They can even be transcribed easily. I won’t be rushing out to buy it, since it turns out its utility for me wasn’t quite what I anticipated, but for those taking a lot of notes, I think it’s worth checking out.

Third edition of Evidence Explained is available!

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New edition of Evidence Explained is out!The newest edition of Evidence Explained: Citing History Sources from Artifacts to Cyberspace, by Elizabeth Shown Mills, has just been released. I ordered mine from Amazon last month and it arrived last week. Very exciting!

Evidence Explained is the gold standard for source citation. This new volume is a hefty 892 pages. It’s hardcover. And heavy. (And also available in an electronic edition.) But it contains within its covers the answers to knotty problems of how to cite a source. This edition includes updated information citing genetic sources as well as sources from the Internet.

Over the last few years that I’ve been doing more serious genealogy research on my family it has become very clear that citing and analyzing sources is the key to doing accurate, reliable research that holds up over time. Great source citation also helps other genealogy researchers who may want to use the data I’ve gathered because they can tell it’s reliable and find it themselves if they want. It may feel like extra work to create a proper source citation, but it’s the kind of thing that can pay dividends in the future. The hefty source I created for my ancestor’s Civil War pension records will allow me or any researcher to be able to find the source again. And its validity is apparent by the citation.

If you’re serious about your genealogy research and don’t have Evidence Explained on your bookshelf, the publication of this third edition might be just the reason to invest $54 to have it at your fingertips. If you already have the second edition, you can trade it in at Amazon for $29.74 credit and use it toward the third edition! (Thank you to Thomas MacEntee of Geneabloggers for this tip.)

I haven’t had a chance to use the third edition since it arrived last week, but as soon as I get a break from clients, I’m going to read Chapters 1 and 2 on basic principles and plan to consult the work frequently when I’m creating source citations.

Don’t forget your conference notes!

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arcnotebookcameraYesterday I was flying home from an organizers’ conference and decided to take a few minutes to read through the notes contained in the notebook I take to meetings. (In case you’re an office-supply junkie like me, I’ll tell you that I use the Arc disc notebook from Staples–that’s it in the picture–which has repositionable pages that allow me to easily organize my notes in sections.)

As I read through the genealogy section, I became reacquainted with the notes I took from the wonderful sessions I attended at RootsTech 2015. Honestly, some of those sessions had completely slipped my mind as I re-entered real life after the conference. So I put a note on my task list to try out some of the resources in my next genealogy research session. (I’m particularly excited by trying out what I learned in the excellent session called Map My Ancestors, presented by A.C. Ivory.)

I see now that there is a bullet item missing from the list I created when I wrote the blog post Digging out after a conference. I need to add, Review session notes to the list of things I do at home after a conference. It doesn’t matter whether I took regular handwritten notes, used my Livescribe pen, or typed them directly into my iPad or laptop. If I don’t review the notes I’m going to miss out on some of what I learned, because I certainly can’t keep all of it in my head.

My crazy travel schedule this month has precluded my doing any genealogy research so far in April. But I intend to do some on Sunday. And the first place I’m going to look when I start my session is in my conference notebook. I can’t wait!

Make your goals visible

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2015gengoalsscreenshotToday is the last day of the first quarter of 2015, so I thought I’d take a look at the progress I’d made on my goals for the quarter. Since I try to research one family line per quarter, the end of the quarter is significant. Tomorrow, it’ll be time for me to turn my attention from my Adams ancestors (my father’s father’s family) and start researching my Brown ancestors (my mother’s father’s family), according to the schedule I set.

At the end of December, I put together a nifty table with eight different potential accomplishments for each line. My goal was to check off four per quarter. It was a pretty great idea, if I say so myself. But it fell by the wayside for a simple reason: I completely forgot about it.

I just discovered the goal table on my hard drive a week or so ago. While I did not focus on those goals in the first quarter, I did manage to put Xs in a few squares.

So, as I look to the second quarter, I have printed out the table and put it on my bulletin board where I put other things that inspire me. (Like my written goals for this blog.)

Writing goals is an important first step. But I dare say that remembering them is just as important!