Earlier this year I considered making a list of New Year’s
resolutions; however, I decided not to do this.
The reason being is that they’re essentially goals that you set for
yourself. My husband had recently read a
book by Scott Adams and in the book Scott said that “goals are for losers and systems are for winners.” This outlook
of Scott Adams changed my viewpoint on goals and resolutions so I decided to
try to go about planning and organizing my life or at least one aspect of my
life differently.
So instead of creating actual resolutions for myself I made
a list of Genealogy Goals for 2015. Yes,
I know, goals are for losers; however, I did include an item about how I can try
to take control of my research.
Basically, I want to have a system for how I deal with the stuff that I
find when I’m researching.
The taking control of my research idea is from the January
2015 issue of the Greater Omaha Genealogical Society’s newsletter, Westward Into Nebraska. They had an article by Lisa Alzo that was
taken from her blog. I read the article
and was inspired to “take control of my research!” This is what got me thinking
of how to create a system for how I process the information I find after
searching for it.
It did take me some time because it’s now March and I
haven’t really implemented my new found system.
I’ve taken some steps to organize it and manage it, such as I came up
with the idea to add a source citation column to my research log. Another column I created was one for Source
Analysis. These are two of the steps I
took to get control of it, because Lisa’s article got me thinking about what
bad habits I have in regards to my research.
As I sat and thought about it, I realized that my bad genealogy habits
are not writing down the source citations right away for the things I
find. I do put the information almost
immediately into my research log, and will mention where I found the
stuff. But after I’ve finished that
task, no formal citation is ever written for the source of the information I’ve
perhaps spent weeks, months, or years thinking about how to find, searching for
it, and then perhaps finding a small piece to the puzzle. The other bad habit I have with my research
is never stopping to analyze the source and writing about my research findings
formally, instead of just writing about some of the happenings in this blog.
Once I realized what these bad habits were, I needed to come
up with a way to deal with them and stop my bad habits. Yes, I’ve included source citations in my
genealogy software program for the different life events of my ancestors, and some
of these sources are duplicated on my WeRelate page. However, I didn’t have anything written down
in one central place for all of my sources.
So that’s what led me to create columns for citations and analysis in my
research log, so that everything would be in one place and that I wouldn’t be
able to walk away once I’d entered in finding a particular piece of information
or having visited a website and coming up empty. The fact that I needed to cite the source
would be staring me at in the face, so I would likely feel compelled to write a
citation for the information or lack thereof.
While I was at the RootsTech/FGS conference I overheard some
people near my booth talking about the Evidentia program. It’s for managing the sources that you’ve
accumulated. I was intrigued by it, but
as it was extremely busy in the exhibit hall I didn’t have much time to go in
search of their booth and find out more.
However, soon after hearing about the software, the guy from
the company stopped by my booth early one morning before the hall opened to ask
me a question about something in regards to the conference. I saw that he was with the Evidentia company
and asked him about the program. He gave
me some information and later when one of my colleagues watched the booth, I
went over to learn more. I did buy the
software and have begun using it, but still want to finish my project of
sourcing everything that’s in my research log.
I’ll write more about what progress I’m making with citing my sources, how my system is working out for me, and perhaps how the Evidentia program is working out for me.
