An Amateurs' Genealogical Journey

Welcome to my New Adventure,

I started my family history search many years ago and have to say that I still consider myself an amateur in most areas. I can find many records or sources for records online but when it comes to citing my sources in the past I have left that pretty much alone, relying on what is cited on sites like ancestry.com. Recently I have taken up the challenge to re-organize my research, to cite my sources, to make it so I am not constantly wondering where did I leave off. Source citing is not the only component of genealogy research that I have in the past left to itself, I have also been very lax on my research journal. Where, when, who, what did I search and why.

To solve all these issues and to create a better family history, whether I ever publish or not, I have decided to go back to the beginning for the most part. Find those documents and facts over again and cite them. To further my progress I am doing a few new things:

            1. Using Microsoft OneNote  to organize my entire Genealogy world. I started with this idea a few years ago, but ended up having to replace my laptop and never got back to it, until recently. I looked into using Evernote but decided that OneNote gives me more options to organize my files according to the way I have been doing things, only digitally…..I'll get back to this in another post.

             2. Starting a new tree on ancestry and in my Family Tree Maker 2012 software. I love the fact that I can sync these together.

             3. Listening and reading more on Genealogy Research, especially citing sources. So far I have just recently started listening to podcasts and watching some of the many mini videos on genealogy research how to's….we live in a very rural area, which make internet videos and such a bit of a problem, as our internet is limited.

             4. Starting a new blog, all about my genealogical journey's. I hope to include much of what I am finding as I go along in the hope that I will be able to meet and help other family members with there research, but I also hope to include resources and other items that have and will help me along the way.

             5. Organizing my digital files to coordinate with my OneNote Notebooks.

             6. Building my genealogy book library. I love books could probably spend my whole paycheck on them were it feasible, but since it isn't I will have to build my library one or maybe two books at a time.

Hopefully, with the new plan in place and the new to me resources I can have a better work flow, make more progress, track my research and cite my sources. If you have any tips, hints or resources that have been a big help to you and would like to share please drop me a note via email or the comments box below. 

Danica