Organize Your Genealogy.

214 Pages·2016·8.81 MB·English

by  Smith

organize your genealogy
STRATEGIES and SOLUTIONS for EVERY RESEARCHER
Drew Smith
CINCINNATI, OHIO
shopfamilytree.com
dedication
This book is dedicated to one of the most organized people I’ve ever met: my husband, George G. Morgan.
CONTENTS
Introduction
CHAPTER 1
Organizing Yourself
Prep your mind and body for the rigors of research with this guide to optimizing you and your habits.
CHAPTER 2
Organizing Your Space
Clean up your research space. This chapter describes the workspace arrangement and office supplies you’ll need to
build a productive genealogy headquarters.
CHAPTER 3
Organizing Your Goals
Plan your way to genealogical success by using the techniques in this chapter to develop, manage, and evaluate
realistic goals for your research.
CHAPTER 4
Organizing Your Notes and Ideas
Never lose a train of thought again. This chapter provides suggestions for how to preserve and sort information,
from your random musings to crucial, irreplaceable interviews with family members.
CHAPTER 5
Organizing Your Files
Store your hard-earned research with this guide to organizing your physical documents and digital files.
CHAPTER 6
Organizing Your Research Process
Plan your way to genealogical success. This chapter covers how to manage your research workflow and use tools
such as genealogy software programs to document and manage your projects from start to finish.
CHAPTER 7
Organizing Your Communication
Sort all those pesky e-mails and letters by using the tips in this chapter to optimize your mail-sorting system, e-mail
inbox preferences, and even social media accounts.
CHAPTER 8
Organizing Your Online Research
Surf the web with confidence. This chapter discusses how to keep track of your files, searches, and family trees on
the ever-growing Internet.
CHAPTER 9
Organizing Your Research Trips
Travel far and wide for your research with this guide to having efficient research sessions abroad, whether at a
stateside library or an archive in the old country.
CHAPTER 10
Organizing Your Learning
Expand your genealogical knowledge. This chapter details how to choose and manage important genealogy lectures,
conferences, webinars, and more.
CHAPTER 11
Organizing Your Volunteering
Give back to the community with this guide to pitching in with (and even running) genealogical-society meetings
and projects.
Conclusion
Appendix
Introduction
Why Do We Organize Anything?
As I sat down with the intention of dictating the first words of this book, I realized I was missing a piece of
electronic hardware that allows me to connect my wireless headset to my desktop computer. This device, a
“dongle,” is about the size of a USB flash drive. I had always kept this device in a special location in my desk
drawer, but I couldn’t find it when I looked for it there. I began looking in other drawers and on top of other
furniture in the room, all to no avail. And the longer I looked, the more stressed I became. Without the dongle, I
couldn’t use the headset, and I would have to think of another way to dictate this book. The irony was not lost on me
that my lack of organization was preventing me from beginning a book about organization!
Fortunately, it occurred to me to look behind my computer desk to see if the dongle had fallen. Sure enough,
there it was on the floor, hidden between the wall and the woofer that provided the deep bass sounds for my
computer’s speakers. I was back in business, and so I began this book.
What lessons can we learn from this experience? First, when we’re disorganized, we lose precious time. The
time better spent searching for our ancestors, evaluating genealogical evidence, communicating with distant cousins,
planning a research trip, learning new research techniques, or volunteering for a genealogy society is instead spent
searching for misplaced equipment, notes, and documents. In some cases, we may even have to spend money to
replace a missing item—money that could be better spent on new hardware, software, online subscriptions, books,
magazines, webinars, conferences, and research trips.
Even setting aside the needless loss of time and money, the frustration we experience when we’re disorganized
increases our stress level, which can cause physical and mental harm. As a result, our ability to be careful and
productive genealogists is diminished, and we get less pleasure from our genealogical activities. But when we’re
calm and organized, we can think more clearly and do better work.
Finally, when we’re organized, other people find it easier to work with us. Many of us have contacted another
genealogist and asked for information, only to discover the other person has misplaced our e-mail or misfiled the
document we’re asking about. When this happens, we question whether or not we want to work with this individual.
An organized genealogist, however, can be a pleasure to work with.
What’s more, the pitfalls of unorganized genealogical research aren’t really that different from other activities.
For example, misplacing a recipe or a kitchen utensil can make cooking difficult. Try gardening when you have lost
the packet of seeds or the garden tool you need. Clearly, being organized has universal benefits.
Who Should Read This Book?
Most people can benefit from the organizational advice in this book, but let me discuss the most obvious groups. I
hope this book will benefit new genealogists, as it’s often easier to adopt good habits when you’re starting a
relatively new activity than to change the way you have been doing things for years. I especially enjoy writing books
and articles for beginning genealogists, and I still remember what it was like when I started this hobby. This guide
will hopefully be the kind of book I would like to have read as a beginner looking to establish good habits early on.
The next audiences for this book are intermediate or advanced genealogists. While they may already use some of
the techniques discussed here, many genealogists who have been working for a few years still look for ways to
examine their procedures and how to improve them. And more experienced genealogists may find it useful to learn
about organizing techniques they can share with beginning genealogists.
Even professional genealogical researchers are motivated to be organized in the work they do. Being
disorganized can result in dissatisfied customers and a loss of potential income. Genealogists must organize not only
the research itself, but also correspondence and other business-related paperwork. Many professional genealogists,
whether or not they take clients, may also engage in speaking and writing. These activities involve meeting
deadlines, traveling to speaking venues, corresponding with editors and societies, and filing contracts and invoices.
All those activities require the organization we’ll be discussing in this book; editors appreciate organized writers,
and societies appreciate organized speakers.
Many genealogists will also get involved with local, state, and national genealogical societies, work that
involves a certain level of organization. Volunteering to serve as an officer or as a member of a committee will
involve dealing with schedules, correspondence, documents, and possibly travel. When you’re organized, you’ll get
more satisfaction out of serving a society, and the people working with you will appreciate how organized you are.
Finally, this book can benefit anyone who needs to work with large amounts of information. For instance,
historians engage in many of the same activities as a genealogist, such as keeping track of documents needed to
construct an historical narrative. Similarly, a journalist working on a story, like a genealogist, needs to organize
(ideas, notes, and interview times and transcripts), communicate with sources and editors, and plan research trips.
Although this book uses examples based upon genealogical research, the organizing principles laid out here apply to
many types of activities.
How Can You Best Use This Book?
While this book can certainly be read from beginning to end, I expect that you’ll find certain chapters more
interesting than others, especially if you feel a strong need for improvement in a particular area. Review the table of
contents and identify two or three chapters that you think will be most helpful to you immediately. Later, you can
return to the remaining chapters to see if they contain ideas that will improve upon your existing procedures.
As you read this book, don’t beat yourself up over the organizational problems you have. You may be well
organized in some parts of your life, unaware that you could apply what you’ve learned in those areas to the areas
needing better organization. This book doesn’t point out a long list of things you’re doing wrong. But rather, it
highlights some useful techniques to stay organized. These may be techniques that you already use in the non-
genealogical parts of your life and can apply to your genealogical work.
What Are the Basics of A Good Organizing System?
For an organizing system to be successful, it needs to adhere to a few general principles that we’ll discuss
throughout the book:
1. It needs to be simple. A simple system is easy to learn, easy to remember, and easy to use. Complex systems
are frustrating and difficult to maintain.
2. It needs to work well with your existing way of doing things. This means that the system needs to be flexible
enough that you can customize it to fit your workflow, making it that much easier to adopt. And because
each of us is different in our personalities, preferred ways of doing things, and goals, the flexibility of the
organizing system becomes essential.
3. It needs to be something you can implement in stages. Change is inherently stressful. By making small
changes over time, you can keep your stress level low. Too many changes too quickly can cause you to
revert to the way you used to do things. Even small improvements in organizing your genealogy should
result in observable benefits, which will motivate you to continue.
And now with that in mind … Let’s get organized!
1
organizing
yourself
When picking up the typical book about organizing, you’d probably expect it to talk about organizing your physical
space, your papers, your digital files, and your to-do lists—so you may not expect a book to begin by focusing on
you. But genealogical research is primarily a mental activity (with the possible exception of traipsing through a
cemetery). Your mind is without a doubt your most important genealogical research tool. If you don’t make an effort
to be at your most mentally alert, your research will suffer, and you’ll find yourself missing important clues or
making mistakes when evaluating evidence or entering data.
Genealogy is nothing if not a mental game, so you’ll need to know about and take care of yourself to do your
best work. This chapter discusses how to identify and implement ways of making yourself a more effective
researcher, including improving your mental health, setting personal routines, simplifying your workspace,
automating your workflow, and taking adequate breaks.
Maintaining Mental Wellness
Because genealogy is a mental activity, you’ll need to make sure you focus on your brain’s basic needs to be
successful.
For example, psychologists don’t agree on everything, but they’ve come to a consensus concerning the human
need for at least one thing: sleep. You’ve probably heard the stereotype of the genealogist staying up all night in her
bathrobe and bunny slippers, looking for just one more record before calling it a night. But fuzzy slippers aside,
doing genealogical research when you are weary and bleary-eyed is not a good idea. Getting a full seven to eight
hours of sleep each night—ideally starting and ending at the same time every day (on both weekdays and weekends)
—will set your brain into a regular pattern and make it easier for you to figure out what time of day you’re most
productive.
I realize that what I’m suggesting here is stopping when you’ve reached a certain time of the night and going to
bed, even if you’re hot on the trail of an elusive ancestor. But don’t worry: You can make notes about where you left
off so you can eagerly resume the hunt at your next opportunity. After all, you don’t really want to make a mistake
late at night that sends you down the wrong family line, do you?
Your diet is another factor that affects your mental wellness. You want to stay well hydrated, but carefully use
caffeinated drinks like soda and coffee if you’re a fan of either. Avoid caffeine in the late afternoon and evening if it
interferes with your ability to get a good night’s sleep.
Monitor the foods you eat at different times of the day, and note how those foods affect your mental alertness.
Keep healthy snacks handy so you don’t find yourself distracted by thoughts of hunger between meals. In particular,
avoid extreme highs and lows that might impact your blood sugar levels, as you’ll have trouble focusing with high
blood sugar and grow tired with low blood sugar, and either can cause your thoughts to be somewhat fuzzy.
Finally, don’t neglect your emotional needs. For instance, as a pet owner, I enjoy having a cat or two snoozing
near my computer desk so that I can observe them and thereby place myself in a calm, relaxed state. They put a big
smile on my face and make my research that much more enjoyable. Having these reminders of things or people you
love—like pictures of loved ones—can lower your stress level and give you motivation when the road gets rough.