Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

Readers weigh in on blog-reading tools

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Feedly is popular among genealogy blog readersEarlier this month, I solicited your suggestions for blog-reading tools. I was interested in hearing how you keep up with the various blogs you read. I was thrilled to receive about a dozen comments with suggestions. As promised, I’m compiling them here for easy reference.

Feedly was the blog reader of choice for five commenters. Two of those were Thomas MacEntee and Jana Last, whose blogs highlight other genealogy blogs, use Feedly. If Feedly is good enough for these blog power-readers, I think it’s probably good enough for me. I’ve just downloaded it and am going to give it a go. So far, set up has been intuitive and easy!

Here are the other suggestions (each of which were mentioned once), in case you want to try any of them:

Several people mentioned that they formerly used and like Google Reader. Alas, Google, in its infinite wisdom, discontinued that service last year.

Thank you to everyone who took the time to share information for this post!

Keeping up with blogs

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How do you manage your blog reading?There are so many great genealogy blogs out there. (I’m flattered that you’re reading this one when you have so many choices!) I am delighted to be part of the GeneaBloggers community, which points me to new and existing genealogy blogs, but I know I underutilize it.

Today I’m pondering how I might do a better job of (a) finding genealogy blogs to read; (b) remembering to read them and (c) finding the time to do so.

So I thought I’d turn to my readers. You guys are such a great source of information. Would you mind telling me how you organize your genealogy blog reading? Do you use RSS feeds and, if so, what platform do you use to read them?I’ve been thinking I could create a Flipboard of favorite blogs but I haven’t even explored it.

I think this is one of those situations where I’m overwhelmed by options and don’t know how to go about researching it without it turning into a huge time suck.

Any advice is much appreciated! I’ll do a follow-up post with the results of this little poll so we can all benefit. (I’d also love to hear what your five favorite genealogy blogs are!)

Thank you!!

Photo by Shardayyy via Flickr. Used under Creative Commons License.

Giving Evernote another try

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Evernote logoI know that people rave about Evernote, for genealogy and for other aspects of life. Over the years, I keep dipping my toe and withdrawing it quickly. The user interface has just never clicked for me.

I blogged back in February of 2013 that I was exploring Evernote for genealogy. That didn’t really pan out, but late in 2013 I started using Springpad, which has a more graphical interface than Evernote. Thanks to Springpad, I became hooked on cloud-based, synching organizing and storage systems. After Springpad announced it was shutting down this month, I exported my data, including my family history research logs, to Evernote.

So now I’m ready to give it another try. I’m trying to be open minded about Evernote’s interface. I bought and read the e-book Evernote Essentials by Brett Kelly, and I’m going to be checking out genealogy-specific information about Evernote. (This morning, I found this great page on Cyndi’s List with genealogy templates for Evernote.)

I’ll keep you posted, but in the meantime I’m wondering whether any of you have either great tips using Evernote in genealogy or  recommendations of more resources to help me learn to use and love Evernote. If so, I’m all ears!

Organized genealogy workspaces in Family Tree Magazine

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Organized genealogy spaces in Family Tree MagazineOne of the things I enjoy about my work as a professional organizer is seeing how people live and work. Of course, I love helping them improve their organizational systems. But I love quizzing already organized people about how they stay organized. We’re all so different and I find there’s always so much to learn.

That’s why I loved the cover story of  the May/June issue of Family Tree Magazine . The article, called Making It Work, by Denise Levenick, The Family Curator, takes a look at the workspaces of six successful genealogy professionals. Those professional are:

  • Photo Detective Maureen A. Taylor
  • Writer and editor Sunny Jane Morton
  • GeneaBlogger founder Thomas MacEntee
  • Genealogy Guys podcast co-host Drew Smith
  • Genealogy Guys podcast co-host George G. Morgan
  • Genealogy Gems podcaster Lisa Louise Cooke

We see photos and learn the inside secrets behind the workspaces–and work systems–of each of these successful genealogists. In addition, Levenick provides lots of organizing tips and suggestions from these pros.  (One of my favorites: “Take a few minutes to file or recycle papers and neaten your desk after each use. You’ll be able to start your next research session with fewer distractions.” ) She also includes a list of online resources. I’m delighted that Organize Your Family History is included in that resource list!

It’s an enjoyable read, full of good advice. A theme among all six subjects was the benefit of eliminating distracting clutter. I know from my experience that putting things away (and having a place to put them) is the key to my productivity at my desk. After reading the article, I was itching to tidy up a bit more!

Incidentally, one way I keep clutter at bay is to subscribe to digital editions of magazine. I receive Family Tree Magazine as a digital subscription. I get an email when it’s available and I download it to read on my computer or iPad. I was able to switch from the print to digital edition mid-year, by simply asking. I love that I don’t have the physical copies of the magazine lying around!