2016 Genealogy Do Over

geneabloggers-z2nskmThis year I have decided to do Thomas MacEntee’s Genealogy do over. It is a 12 month course in improving your family history research and genealogy skills. You look at the tools to use especially using technology and the methodologies for sourcing correctly etc. You also look at using social media to share research. These things have changed tremendously over the 40 years I have been researching my family history.

There is a workbook you can download or purchase in hardcopy to help with keeping yourself on track. Each month tasks are suggested to help you get back on track with your research and have fun while doing it. See link in first paragraph for the download link.

January Tasks:

  • Setting previous research aside
  • Preparing to research

The first month includes putting away what you have already done. This could be very tough, but as I am going to start using a new software programme called Legacy Family Tree, this means I can totally start afresh.

I already have over 10000 people on my database using The Master Genealogist, which is now no longer being updated. Names. dates, places have been added via my research, emails from relatives and information gathered from family reunions over the last 40 years. But not everything has sources and I am not sure if I have created the sources correctly that I have used.

So this year will be a great chance to start my database again and add all data correctly sourced this time. I will probably only do direct line and siblings rather than adding all descendants.

My first step is to clean out boxes and folders with lots of hand written data and purchase the Legacy programme. I thought I already had one at home, maybe I will find it when I do some cleaning up in the office area. As I get more work completed, I will keep updating this post over the month of January. From the little bit I have already done today, I am feeling the effects, sneezing most of the evening from the dust.

My second step will be to collate any files about family history that I have on my computer into folders and sub folders by surname. This shouldn’t take very long.

Thomas says anything you have paid for can be used but only the data on that certificate not any notes you might have added. I don’t have very many paid certificates as most of my data has been from microfilm, microfiche and then printed while at the archives in Tasmania. Though I suppose these could count as paid – they were 20 cents per sheet.

The second section about preparing to research means I might put together some check lists of things to find out about each person I am going to add to my database. I found that Cyndi’s List has some to use on Evernote and as I am going to use that for my research records, I will set them out on that. That way I can sync my desktop, my laptop and my iPad with all the same info.

Readers:

Is anyone else doing the genealogy do over? What is going to be the hardest thing or most interesting thing about the first month? Please leave a comment.