Genealogy Do-Over – Week 1

I learned of this thing called a Genealogy Do-Over a couple of months ago while at a conference. Sounded scary but deep down I knew I needed to get on board. Starting with Week 1 today (July 3), I have taken some time to review my research practices and have begun to better organize my office.

The topics of Week 1 are:

• Setting Previous Research Aside
• Preparing to Research
• Establishing Base Practices and Guidelines

Setting Previous Research Aside.  This will take a bit of work. I am so disorganized. I have research in every form and stashed in various places in the house:

• office desk
• five-drawer file cabinet
• on book shelves in binders and folders (or not)
• travel case that I take to conferences
• TV tray in living room where I sit and read while watching/listening to TV
• moving boxes that are still unpacked
• two desktop computers (old and new)
• two laptops (broken hinge one that is slow and new fabulous purple replacement)
• flash drives (who knows how many)
• memory cards from my camera (again, who knows how many), and
• a terabyte external hard drive

The electronic files are duplicated in several places I am sure. I lost some of my research when another older laptop and a previous external drive crashed. To say I need this Do-Over is an understatement.

Preparing to Research. In all honesty, I seem to research better at night after the sun goes down. I am not as distracted with other things of the day a.k.a. pesky housework. I am a natural night owl anyway. Many of my siblings are, too. That’s the kind of thing you don’t necessarily learn in researching ancestors. I wonder if Delanie was a night person.

My thoughts on preparation would be to gather my essential items close and have templates of forms and filing system at the ready. Here is my to-do list for this week:

• Review the templates available on Genedocs Template’s Facebook page at Genedocs Templates.
• Watch and adopt useful practices from Linda Debe’s instructional YouTube video entitled Organizing Digital Files found here:  Organizing Digital Files.
• Attack (clean) my office and create a healthy, organized environment conducive to better research.  This will include gathering and organizing all of the research from the various stashes throughout the house.  And then, Set it Aside!

Office – Before

As an incentive to follow through with that last bullet point, my shameful office pic should serve as motivation. I hope to have an After pic before Week 2 starts. I think I need an intervention. Wait, this Do-Over is just that!! Going to do my best but I get tired just looking at this picture.

Establishing Base Practices and Guidelines. This feels like I am making New Year’s resolutions. With all good intentions, here are some things that come to mind in how best to research.

1. Do not research in the wee hours of the morning (it is currently 1:30 a.m.). Did I mention I am a night owl?
2. Keep research materials at my desk/office area not all over the house. This is why my office must ultimately be a comfortable place to sit at the desk and have a separate comfortable reading area. I don’t always want to be sitting at a computer (I do that all day at my 9-to-5 job). I like to read newsletters and blogs on my iPad while curled up on the couch.
   1. Research materials include:
      1. laptop
      2. Evidence Explained
      3. notebooks
      4. Evernote (have not used this before but intend to try it)
      5. Research logs
3. Develop and maintain an electronic filing and naming system.
4. Go paperless when possible. Keep all notes and papers in an electronic format. Original documents can be filed safely away in an archival friendly manner.
5. Back-up ALL electronic files:
   1. on a cloud server
   2. on external hard drive
6. Keep learning!  Continuing education through conferences, blogs, webinars, newsletters, history books, interviews.
7. Join my local genealogical society and relevant societies to my personal research. Check. Already have done this.
8. Give back! Regularly contribute to the genealogy community.  Do not always take, take, take. Transcribe cemetery headstones, share obituaries, or other interesting facts that I find along the way.
9. Establish daily tasks to keep my research from becoming stagnant. Perhaps on Monday I can write a blog post on my weekend research accomplishments. Tuesday could be focusing on a particular person. I imagine this will fluctuate as my research develops. It could be that I take Mondays to think through what my tasks should be for that week in blog form.

I am curious to see how this list changes as I get further into this Do-Over. Old habits are hard to break. Taking things slow and being deliberate about each task should bring me closer to the goal — breaking down brick walls through organized research!

I have given myself a weekend to get a lot of the office organization done. Wish me luck!

If you are interested in a Do-Over for your own research, check it out here:  Genealogy Do-Over.