Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

Take action now to fight rate hike for genealogical immigration records

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I follow genealogist Jennifer Mendelsohn on Twitter and through her learned that the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS, which used to be called the Immigration and Naturalization Service) is proposing a substantial rate hike for genealogical records.

You can read all the details at Records Not Revenue, but the Reader’s Digest version is that, under the proposal, digitized genealogy records will cost $240 and paper copies will cost $625. The current rate for those same documents is $65. Prior to 2016, the rate was $20 to $35. Obviously, this rate hike would have a big effect on many genealogists’ ability to access these records, which include naturalization files, alien forms, visa files and registry files.

Records Not Revenue, an effort of “coordinated by an ad hoc group of genealogists, historians and records access advocates,” points out that this rate hike is relevant to all genealogists, not just those with immigrant ancestors whose records might be available through the USCIS. The website states, “If USCIS finalizes a rule to make these records much more difficult to access via significant fee hikes, who’s to say other governmental agencies won’t follow suit? Attempts to make one record set less accessible should make any researcher in any field nervous.”

I’m bringing it up now not to worry people but rather because there’s something those of us who are worried can do. Records Not Revenue urges us to read the proposed rule, and submit comments to the Federal Rulemaking Portal, copying our Senators and Representatives, before 16 December 2019. The provide all the links necessary, along with suggested conversation starters. They’ve made it as easy as possible.

To learn more, check out Records Not Revenue, as well as this article on Medium by Jennifer Mendolsohn. That article gives real-life examples of how these records can help people with their genealogy.

The beauty of a genealogy buddy

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The joy of a genealogy buddyLast month, I had a genealogy play date. My friend Vickie Sheridan, whom I met through this blog, and I met at the History and Genealogy department at the St. Louis County Library headquarters. The library has great resources. But that’s not the only reason we met. There are many benefits of having a genealogy friend to research with–even if you share no common research interests. These benefits include:

  • Setting aside time for research. By putting a six-hour (including lunch) genealogy date on my calendar, I elevated genealogy research on my priority list that day. In a month where I got precious little research done, this day was a stand out.
  • Getting out of the house. I appreciate an excuse to go to the genealogy library, rather than researching online at home. I have more resources available to me at the library (including access to documents on Family Search that I can’t access at home). Having a dates gets me away from my desk.
  • Keeping me focused on my research. When I’m researching quietly beside a friend who’s also researching, I tend to stay focused, rather than let my mind (or feet) wander.
  • Having someone to brainstorm with. It’s so nice to be able to pick Vickie’s brain (or vice versa). We’ve been genealogy buddies for five years now, so we’re a bit familiar with one another’s research. We try not to interrupt each other’s research, but when we do have questions, it’s really helpful.
  • Our mutual interest in genealogy. Some (most?) of my friends outside the genealogy world really don’t want to hear about my little genealogy victories. But Vickie does!
  • Having company. Genealogy can be such a solitary pursuit. It’s really nice working on my own research in the company of someone else. Vickie is also my genealogy conference buddy. We’ve attended more than ten conferences together–we even drove to Indianapolis together this summer to attend Midwestern Roots. It’s great to have someone to hang out with at conferences.

If you have local friends or family who are also genealogy enthusiasts, I encourage you to get out to a library or cemetery or conference or other genealogy site together. Genealogy buddies are real treasures!

Keeping track of learning resources

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I don’t know about you, but I’ve purchased a lot of educational products surrounding genealogy. And I somehow hope I’m not alone when I confess that I have not read/viewed the majority of what I’ve purchased.

A big part of the problem is that the products are typically downloaded and I don’t have a great system for storing them where I’ll find them again. I also don’t have a great memory, so I often forget I’ve even made the purchase.

I decided to try to do something about this. I created a Trello board called G: Learning Resources. (I use the G prefix before all my genealogy-related Trello boards.) Within that board, I created some lists, by topic or source. Then I combed my hard drive for these downloaded documents. I’m not finished yet, but I found a lot in my Genealogy folder. Some were in subfolders, so there was at least an attempt at organization. (I even had one called Learning Resources to Read that I don’t remember creating and haven’t looked at in years.) I created notes for each of the individual resources and attached either the document or a path to the document to each note. For smaller documents, like short pdfs, I attached the document itself to the note in Trello. For resources larger than 10 megabytes (the Trello limit for attachments for the free version), I’ve added the path to the file on my hard drive in the description area of the note.

I’m just getting started but here’s a portion of that Trello board. (You can click on the image to see a larger version.)

Janine's Learning Resources Trello Board

 

And here’s an example of an individual note. It’s for the slide deck from a talk on Ancestry. At the top of this post is another note I created for a webinar that consisted of bunch of different files on different topics.

Now that my resources are together I think I have a fighting chance of actually benefiting from them. A giant find today was the screencast that Diahan Southard had made of a personal consultation we had back in 2015. I knew she’d sent it to me and had tried unsuccessfully to find it on my hard drive last year. (The problem was that it had my name, not hers, in the file name, since she had created it.) So I renamed it, added it to my Trello board and am take great comfort in knowing I’ll be able to find it when I turn my attention back to my DNA research.

Trello allows for Labels (like tags) to be added to individual notes. So when I have more time to spend with it, I’ll think I’ll add some labels, including a “Read” one so I can mark the resources I actually read.

This has been great for corralling my backlog and making it accessible. As a bonus, I think it will help me be more mindful about future purchases. Since I’ll easily be able to see what I already have, I may purchase less (and money). And now I have a place to put those purchases. I can add newly purchased resources to my Learning Resources Trello board and tag them with a “New” or “2019” label so they don’t get lost among the older stuff.

I feel like this will work for me. I’m interested, though, in how you keep track of your learning resources. Please share in the comments!

Highlights of the NGS conference

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I was so glad I attended last week’s family history conference from the National Genealogical Society. It was a terrific conference for me. I attended NGS four years ago, the last time it was in the St. Louis area, but I got more out of this year. I think that’s because I’m further along in my research so the more advanced classes were more helpful to me. Sometimes we hear talks that we need to hear just at the right time.

Over the course of four days, I attended 14 classes. My brain hurt a little at the end! I used the terrific NGS app to select my classes before the conference and I was so grateful that I didn’t have to make on-the-spot decisions. I did a great job of selecting because all the classes I took, except one, were very helpful.

One highlight of the conference was attending four classes taught by Elizabeth Shown Mills. Of course I was familiar with her work (Evidence Explained is legendary!) but I don’t think I’d ever actually listened to her speak, certainly not in person. Without exception, all of her classes were excellent, but her class on Context was mindset-shifting. She offered an explanation for why context is so important, along with specific suggestions for how to find context for our ancestors’ lives. I was so grateful for the opportunity to briefly chat with Elizabeth after that session and tell her how valuable I thought it was.

Elizabeth sets some impressively high standards but if I can strive to come close to them, I know I will be upping my game.

Another highlight of the conference was meeting up with some blog readers as well as talking with a podcast listener. And I met some really terrific folks just by sitting next to them in sessions.

I’m planning to take a research trip to Kentucky next month and many of the classes fed right into that. I took classes on planning a research trip, on Kentucky resources, on locating obscure and hidden resources, and of course the class on context. Also helpful will be the classes on breaking through brick walls (which Elizabeth Shown Mills prefers to call stone walls–more on that in a future post). I hope to do some thorough preparation so that I can make the best use of the local resources when I’m in Kentucky.

Next year’s NGS conference will be held in Salt Lake City from May 20 to 23, 2020. Based on the quality of this year’s conference, I’m planning to attend! If you’ve ever wondered whether going to a genealogy conference was worth the time, expense and effort, for me the answer is most assuredly yes.