Kristin’s Do-Over - Week 5
Needless to say, I'm on my own timeline for the Do-Over. I do have a good excuse for last week in that we attended RootsTech/FGS 2015 in Salt Lake City, with a few extra days beforehand in the Family History Library. This post was initially written before the trip, and I actually do have some results that I've entered in the Research Log. (I'll have to write up in a separate post the prep and results from the FHL.)
For Week 5 of the Genealogy Do-Over, the topics were:
- Building a Research Toolbox
- Citing Sources
Once again, I’m not keeping up with the MacEntees and Joneses. I’ve been watching the posts in the Facebook group for the Genealogy Do-Over regarding different links that we can include in our Toolbox. That’s still a to-do item for me. And since I haven't yet done any real research or entered anything into my research log, I have yet to cite any sources. Toward this objective, I do pledge to read the first two chapters of Evidence Explained, the “foundation chapters."
So, what have I done this week?
I spent some time working on genealogy-related business cards with the most common surnames in my tree. As part of that, I also worked on developing a logo for The Intentional Genealogist that I can also save as a “favicon”. What’s a “favicon”, you ask? According to Wikipedia:
A favicon/ˈfævɪkɒn/ (short for Favorite icon), also known as a shortcut icon, Web site icon, tab icon or bookmark icon, is a file containing one or more small icons,[1] most commonly 16×16 pixels, associated with a particular website or web page.[1][2] A web designer can create such an icon and upload it to a website (or web page) by several means, and graphical web browsers will then make use of it.[3] Browsers that provide favicon support typically display a page's favicon in the browser's address bar (sometimes in the history as well) and next to the page's name in a list of bookmarks.[3] Browsers that support a tabbed document interface typically show a page's favicon next to the page's title on the tab, and site-specific browsers use the favicon as a desktop icon.[1]
I finally finished this step for both business cards and website, so, for the website, if you’re using Chrome or Firefox you can see it in the top toolbar — it’s that little tiny icon on the webpage tab in your browser; Safari doesn't show it. For creation of a logo/icon I found a free app for the Mac in the AppStore that will do some basic icon creation: Art Text Lite. There is also a paid version with more fonts and samples. Then to convert it to a favicon, I used this website: http://favicon.htmlkit.com/favicon/. Bruce then moved it to the appropriate place on the blog server and — voilà! (If you’re interested in more detail on adding a favicon see this article on Bruce’s business site; he also has a paragraph on creating an Apple-specific icon [used on iOS]).
Also this week, I entered some additional books and Legacy QuickGuides into LibraryThing and then exported it into a format that could be imported into Excel. From there I did some minor formatting (fonts, sorting, hiding columns, and page layout) before saving it as a PDF file and adding it to Evernote. I will have this with me when I travel now and hopefully avoid purchasing duplicates — or missing the chance to buy an item for fear that it *is* a duplicate. I also copied some of the research QuickGuides that I have into Evernote so they will be with me.
I listened to a couple of YouTube videos on organization and have refined my flow. I like the idea from Ancestry Anne of first saving an image to a TEMP folder, then adding it to my tree, sourcing it, and only then moving the image from TEMP to its permanent home on the hard drive.
I spent the remainder of last Friday (technically the beginning of Week 4, but hey…) working on consolidating media or otherwise genealogy-related files into a new single Genealogy directory/folder (with subdirectories/subfolders) on our RAID array attached to the Mac Mini. Any old records or images are going into a folder called “TEMP-old records”; anything new during the Do-Over will go into a "TEMP-new process" much as I discussed in the previous paragraph. I may change these names, but that’s what they are for right now. Did I get all the files? Heck no! But it’s a start, and that’s what counts!
I also fixed a couple of nagging things on the website (still learning!) and caught up on blogging. The rest of this week will be spent entering data in the Research Log to get ready for a research trip. I also hope to add the Research Toolbox, probably as a separate spreadsheet or file that I can keep in Evernote. I really like having access to information across platforms. I do have both a Dropbox and a Box account, but so far I'm not using them much for genealogy. (Hmm, probably should have Bruce write an article on our backup(s) strategy.)