Attempting to Take Control of my Genealogical Research

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.

What's New!

I completed the correspondence genealogy course at the end of August.  I had been working on this course since August 2009.  One of my co-workers suggested that I write a series of blog posts about my experiences working the course.  I definitely need to send the organization’s blog master an inquiry as to if they would even be interested in posting my experiences on their blog.  Nevertheless, if it doesn’t pan out--these articles will definitely be posted here! 

Worked my organization’s booth at FGS in Springfield, IL.  I really enjoyed meeting students and graders in person there.  The president of my organization purchased the genealogy social networking book that I blogged about previously. It was great to see someone else having an interest in how that plays into the world of genealogy.  I had wonderful to talks with various organizations that gave me some new ideas/clues to look into with my research. 

Took a much needed vacation after the conference and visited my family in Decatur.  Unfortunately after the conference, I caught a cold so this put a bit of a damper on my visit with the family.  I refused to let the cold keep me from working on my afghan and doing genealogical research. 

I have completed embroidering another strip while I was in IL.  However, I’ll be honest work on the afghan has suffered and I’ve been feeling unmotivated to work on it.  Since I finished my genealogy course, I’ve picked up trying to finish the Spanish course I’ve been doing on my own.  Years ago, I had enrolled in a Spanish 101-Destinos: An Introduction to Spanish course at my local community college.  Even though I was really enjoying the course and doing really well at it, I dropped it due to insomnia.  I decided to try to complete the course on my own and have worked on it off and on for many years.  Currently I’m on lesson 49 out of 52 lessons, so I very close to completing this.  The end portion of this course involves writing alot of compositions in Spanish.  I realize that I should focus on my afghan and then concentrate on the Spanish once I’ve finished it.

Before the conference started, I visited the Illinois State Archives to do some planned Brennan and Yockey family research.  I’ll post more about my visit in a later post. 

One of my plans was to visit Mound Cemetery near Hunt City, IL while I visited my family in Decatur.  After the conference and while feeling under the weather, my husband and I drove to the cemetery.  I had wanted to visit it because so many Yockeys are buried there.  I took pictures of many of the graves that I found and even shot a video of the location of Emily and John M. Yockey’s grave.  I’ll post more about this visit in a later post.

I need to scan and send the documents I found to my brother-in-law as well as post them to my WeRelate page as well as document my research in my research log.  Additionally, send him the video I made and post it and the gravesite photos to WeRelate .  I also made some time at the very last minute before I left IL to do some ‘home research’ and in the process I took a few Womble family items from my family’s house-with their permission of course!  One of these items I discovered that I had been referring to it incorrectly and will need to change this in my genealogy source citations that refer to this document.  Another reason to accurately cite your sources!!

Genealogy Social Networking Redux

When I began my blog back in March of this year, I wrote about plans to put the research I’ve done on the Womble family out on the internet.  I’m writing to announce that this probably won’t happen mainly due to my internet service provider, Verizon, taking away their free ftp access.

At first, I was very upset that they were doing this because I already had a site that was supported by their service, but this soon became a moot. 

In 2008, my brother-in-law sent me an email where he mentioned that he was using a website called WeRelate.  I looked at the information that he had put up on his page and found it unimpressive and went on with my life. 

Fast-forward about 3 years I received another email from the same brother-in-law asking that both my husband and I test a function on the WeRelate site.  To make a long story short, I created an account for myself on the site. 

I mentioned in an earlier post that I had joined the Genealogy Wise.  To be honest, I’ve become disappointed with it mainly because I feel that there’s nothing for me to do with it.  I did create a Womble surname group on it, but haven’t heard of anyone interested in joining me there. 

Also, one of my main reasons for getting an account on a genealogy site was so that I would have a space online where I could post my research as well as meet up with others who were researching the same family.

So far, I’ve been pretty happy with the WeRelate site because I could upload a GEDCOM file of my research as well as add pictures of both photos and documents that I’ve obtained during the course of my research. 

The downside is still that I’ve yet to meet up with another fellow Womble researcher; however, I’ve met other people on the site.  My brother-in-law is there, which is nice.  The space where our GEDCOM files meet can be edited by either one of us and this is a great feature. 

I did talk to someone who was researching a collateral line of the Brennen family.  This was a surprising find.  He mentioned that he had a photo of the grave of a Brennen family member.  I was very eager to see it and he offered to email it to me.  Here’s where this story gets interesting, I strongly considered giving him my email address.  I discussed it with my husband and his opinion was that the guy’s intentions were questionable.  The thought crossed my mind that why doesn’t he just add the photo to the page about that Brennen family member?  I wrote back that he could add the photo and have since heard nothing, nor has the photo been added.  This turn of events has led me to believe that my husband’s opinion was well founded.

I’d still like for my research to be accessible to family members who might be interested, but have yet to come up with a way to make this a reality.  Maybe the thing to do is to email them to let them know that I have research on there?