Kristin's Do-Over - Week 3

The topics for the Genealogy Do-Over for Week 3 are:

 

But life happens. You get sick, you get busy — you get behind! And I am. As of 4 Feb, the official Genealogy Do-Over is in Week 5, almost to Week 6. Me, I am still noodling over tasks from the first two weeks. I still don’t have a handle on all the paper and digital files that I have, but maybe you can consider not knowing as being set aside. Maybe? (C'mon -- work with me here!)

 

One of the big tasks for this week is learning a new way to track one’s research. Yes, I confess that I have pulled the same record multiple times (and been excited each time!) just because I don’t know what I have already looked for and what I have. Similarly, I’ve looked in the same place with the same objective more than once without finding anything. (What’s that definition of insanity? “Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different results.”) I *know* I can benefit from a Research Log, so I spent a lot of time the past couple of weeks building on Thomas MacEntee’s Research Log — adding some columns and even some sheets that other Do-Over participants have shared. I came up with a master Excel spreadsheet that I've saved and am using for the basis for my individual logs. I've struggled with how many sheets to use. Do I want one giant one, or one for my mother’s family on back and a second for my father’s on back, or do I want one each for my grandparents’ families? At this point, I’m starting with one workbook for Mom and her ancestors and a second for Dad and his ancestors; it's not an irrevocable decision. Each workbook (spreadsheet) has multiple tabs/worksheets separated by family, and I've spent a fair amount of time putting in facts I need to research and what I currently *think* the information is as a starting point for proving. Now I need to go back (the rest of this week before FGS & RootsTech) and fill in the information for the facts/images that I do have. I do have a bit of a headstart on this because I just applied to and was accepted into the DAR. So I have images of some key documents that I now need to enter into the Research Log. I guess that falls under task #2 for week 3, Conducting Research -- so maybe I'm not so bad off after all. 

 

One step at a time...