WHY have I joined Thomas MacEntee’s Genealogy Do Over?
Most of us have a process for researching our family tree, a process for how we go about finding and gathering our family stories.
Technology resources have changed in ways quite unimaginable when many of us started our genealogical research. Consequently, our family stories are far more accessible than they have ever been.
Yet many of us have not taken the time to review our genealogical research process.
Thomas MacEntee encapsulates this quite well when he says
“I know a lot more about the “process” of genealogical research and I want to put it to use. I want to head out from the same starting point and see where the journey takes me this time.”
2015 is also the year that I am starting a Genealogy Do Over by implementing a new process for capturing information into my Legacy Family Tree database. During the Genealogy Do Over I shall implement and test a new process of adding Sources first to my family database. I have never been completely happy with my Legacy Family Tree database as a glorified card file. This is mostly because processing Sources came at the end of that process. Consequently, Sources have generally not made it into my family database.
So, during the Genealogy Do Over my desk and table will be clutter free. I shall apply my new process to just a very few Individuals in my family database. The rest I shall put aside for the time being.
The company along the way will be most welcome. Indeed, already some good ideas worth some serious consideration have been posted.
During the Genealogy Do Over I am implementing a major change to my family database – something akin to a major service on my car. One of those very big ones that only comes along once in a while between many minor services. This is not a once only Genealogy Do Over. I often make small changes to portion of my family database. I regard honing the WHAT I do as part of gathering and sharing my family stories or my research process as an iterative process.
Which is fortunate. I remember when one of our cats was “done over.” He came home very sore and lay in front of the open fire for days. We gradually removed the mud as it dried. I don’t think my family database could survive equivalent treatment. I shall merely be doing a major overhaul of my research process.