Fall Cleaning

Photo by Anthony Rossbach on Unsplash

​There’s something about the transition between Fall and Winter that triggers the urge to sort and clean.  (or at least think about it!)  We should periodically do this with our genealogy research.  I’m not suggesting that you go mad and throw away your research but instead spend time sorting and re-reading your treasures.  Let’s look at the benefits.

As someone who began their family history journey when research was not a finger tap away but instead involved letters, newsletters, forms and typed pages, I am in a continual battle to ensure that older research is digitized and archived for future reference and new digital finds are properly sourced.  It’s a tedious task but essential to ensuring that record and source information is recorded and saved.
Activities to help you corral your research.
Start writing your family history. 

• Surprised by this one?  There’s nothing like having to find that one missing record to motivate you to find and organize your research for a family line.
  • Benefit:  You are compiling records to write your story AND identifying missing records that would make your family story more complete.
    

Decide on how you would like your records to be organized.

• Despite working in the technology world for many years, I find that when I want to really read and study information a printed page works best for me.  There is nothing wrong with that.  If that is how you work best then the key is to organize that research in binders, folders or whatever way would make sense to you and your descendants.
  • Benefit: You can see what data is missing and what records need to be found.  Plus, anyone taking over your research would have an easier time figuring out the data that is organized versus thrown in a box haphazardly.
    
• If you are a computer only person that’s great!  You are a step ahead in making sure that your research records are digitized and hopefully backed up to the cloud and/or on an external hard drive. I would challenge you to ensure that your digital records are fully sourced so that you or anyone else could go back to where you found the data.
  • Benefit: Your records will be safe from computer loss or natural disaster.  Citing your sources will make it easier for you and your family to understand from where you found the record.
    
• What if you like both paper and digital?  That is fine too.  It becomes challenging to keep track of what records you do have for each person.   You could ensure that you have a digital copy for all records and paper copies for those that you are currently working with. 
  • Benefit:  Having the best of both worlds can be tricky but it does help you ensure that you have a digital backup and more than one copy of these records that you’ve worked so hard to find.

1. Source Records
   • When you first started in your family research, you may have received old papers or family trees from other family.  They may have just known the information from family stories or personal knowledge. Have you looked for records that confirm that data?
   • Go back and look at your original research. Do you have source records?
   • Start putting in the source information into your family trees if it isn’t there. (Yes, this is a painful process if you haven’t cited your sources as you entered data, but it is a gift for your descendants or whoever picks up the genealogy torch after you are gone.
   • There are books to help you cite your sources including: Cite your sources: A manual for documenting family histories and genealogical records by Richard S Lacky, 1980 and Elizabeth Shown Mill’s “QuickSheet: Your Stripped-Bare Guide to Citing Sources”, May 25, 2017.
2. To throw or not to throw.  Before throwing things out, make sure that you have a digital copy if you don’t want to keep a paper copy.  Of course, you would not want to throw away original materials that relate to your family’s history.  Once you throw it out, it’s gone so it would be a good time to cautious. I tend to keep papers that are not easily accessible from online sites.
3. Work on a surname or an individual at a time.  You will be overwhelmed if you try to do it all at once.
4. Set a goal to working on this one hour per week is less overwhelming than spending a day sorting through materials only to put them all back. (Been there.)  A better approach is to handle a paper once. If you need to digitize it, enter the data in your software program, and/or file it, do so before you move on to the next source.

Here are a few resources on organizing your genealogy.
Cyndi’s List/Organizing
American Ancestors/Get Organized
Organize 365/Organizing Your Family’s Genealogy

A quick search of books will give you a wide variety of resources to choose from.  The key to managing your data and research is to organize it in a way that works for you.  Everyone has their own style and that’s ok.  I’m always looking for better ways to organize but the key is to pick something that you’ll be able to maintain and continue to do.  Good luck!
Happy Fall/Winter Genealogy Cleaning!