In 2018, I taught an Osher class called Creative Genealogy. Here’s the catalog description of that class:
So you’ve created your family tree. You’ve verified some things and disproven others. What do you do now? In this class we’ll look at ways to get creative with your genealogy research. No, I don’t mean making things up to make it sound more interesting. I mean looking at activities like writing and publishing your family stories, creating photo albums, blogging, using spreadsheets and other technology to deepen your understanding of your roots, taking genealogy research trips, and making a genealogy Facebook Page. This class will be most useful for people who have already done some genealogy research.
I have taught this class two more times since this first offering, and I’m scheduled to teach it again in October of this year. I have limited the class to 30 members each time I’ve offered it, because I want to be able to interact with the people in the class and give them a chance to get to know each other a little.
We all had a great time the first time I offered this class – so great, in fact, that we kept the party going after the class was over. At the end of the final session, one of the class members suggested we form a genealogy group. So we did. It’s called the Williamsburg Area Genealogy Society (WAGS), and it now has almost 50 members. Each time I teach the class, we get 5-10 more WAGS members. WAGS has become an Osher “Shared Interest Group,” which means Osher provides us with meeting space and advertises our group in their catalog.
Every time I teach this class, I connect with the members of this class about 10 days before the class actually starts. I send them a SurveyMonkey instrument that asked for information about the scope and depth of the genealogy research. I send them links to some websites that they might not have encountered in the course of their research. I ask them to do a brief preliminary writing assignment to get them focused on the things I’ll be addressing in the class. Most of the class members follow through on the things I suggest that they do, although not all of them. That’s okay.
This slide outlines the focus of each session of this class:
Session #1: Researching Your Ancestors
The focus of this class is on breaking out of the sometimes unhelpful habits we get into when we are researching. Genealogists tend to get trapped in the “build your tree as far back as you can” approach to doing their family histories, and they get discouraged when they don’t seem to be making any progress. Part of the focus of this class is on identifying other online research tools to enhance their experience with Ancestry.com.
We spend this session exploring the websites on this spreadsheet. My purpose is to let people know about the variety of sources where they can access information that will help them do better and more productive genealogy research. They are usually family with some of the sources – like Pinterest, YouTube, and Ebay – but often don’t realize how useful these sources can be for genealogists. If you are involved in researching your genealogy, or if you’ve thought about it but don’t know where to start, these websites can help you figure out what information is out there.
Session #2: Organizing Your Information
In this session, we focus first on goal-setting. I use this image on my opening slide:
We have all set goals throughout our lives – long-range career and personal goals, mid-range goals to get us to the next phase of our lives, and short-range goals to get us through the next hours or days. When you do genealogy research, goal setting is also important. In this session, we first look at the steps for organizing genealogy research:
What have I already done?
Where am I right now?
Where do I want to go?
How do I want to get there?
What can I do TODAY?
Addressing all of these questions requires specific research skills. Here are some examples:
To be aware of what you have already done, you need to set up a research log or some other way of tracking resources (both in-person and online) you have already explored. Research logs are sometimes tedious but they are really the only way to avoid diving down the same rabbit holes multiple times.
To focus on where you are right now, you need to identify what questions you are currently trying to answer (that involves setting up specific goals – not “to add to my family tree” but rather “to figure out where my great-great-grandparents disappeared to after the 1870 census.”) Another part of this is figuring out how much time you can reasonably expect to allocate to your genealogy research.
To determine where you want to go, you have to identify your goals. Teachers know about SMART goals – specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely goals. Without a defined goal, you don’t know when you have succeeded.
Next, you need to make a plan. This should be as specific as you can make it. It can extend out over days, weeks, or months. But more than anything else, it’s important that you identify sub-goals that will give you the satisfaction of accomplishing something.
And last, make a to-do list – maybe for today, but maybe over a longer term. Items on your to-do list should be concrete and observable – you need to be able to know when you’ve done it.
Once you’ve organized your research approach, you need to organize your workspace – both physically and digitally. Look at your physical desk space and environment. Are the things you use most often convenient to get to? Does your closest desk drawer contain things you use frequently? Do you always have to move your chair back to open the file drawer you use most often? Figure out ways to make all of this most efficient.
Then look at your digital organization. Do you have folders specific to what you’re trying to do? Do you have a folder labeled “Documents” without any subfolders? Does your “Documents” folder have a subfolder named “Documents?” Do you have folders of pictures that look like this? (This is a snip from one of my pictures folders. Mea culpa.) If you’re not interested enough to take the time to identify and label these pictures, you can be certain that your heirs won’t want to do it, either.
Do you always have to open multiple folders to find the document or resource you’re looking for? Chances are you need to reevaluate and revise your storage scheme.
There are a lot of sources to help you get organized; one of the best is at the Genealogy Guys Blog http://blog.genealogyguys.com/search/label/Organization?fbclid=IwAR3dcFHV1ty_AqaAorN-ySmuzLT9Ic-GoExfwGtfWMyj5JUACDYJyojEMIo. When you click on this link, it will take you to the most recent post in the thread about organizing. Scroll down the page to find the first post (January 1, 2020). NOTE: Even if you don’t do genealogy, the organizing suggestions you’ll find in this series of blog posts will be very useful to you.
Or you could go to The Organized Genealogist Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/groups/organizedgenealogist. The 42,000 members of this group share questions and suggestions about organizing all aspects of genealogy. To join this group, you will have to answer a couple of questions, but they’re not very difficult. Their “Files” section is particularly useful, as members have uploaded templates and forms they have found useful in their research. It should come as no surprise to you that this set of Files is well-organized and easily accessible.
I spend some time in this class talking about using spreadsheets to organize all aspects of a genealogy research project. For people who don’t know how to use Excel, I provide some websites that contain tutorials and videos to help figure out this technology. It’s worth the time it takes to master Excel.
Session #3: Telling Your Story
The subtitle of this session is “Childproofing Your Research.” Most of our family members don’t appreciate our fascination with this hobby and are likely to throw all of our stuff away when we are gone.
It is helpful to be as specific as you can. The following form gives you an idea of the things that you need to think about. The more specific your directions are, the easier it will be for your heirs to follow your wishes.
We spend this class talking about ways to keep the results of your research alive, either through writing about it or making physical objects from it – crafts, photo albums, scrapbooks, and the like. We all have our own interests and talents in this area. For me, it’s writing. I have self-published a dozen books about my family history, and I continue to write and blog about it regularly. Every time I publish a book, I send copies of it to a handful of family members and also donate a copy to a local genealogy library. You should maintain a list of everything you’ve done (with pictures!) so that your heirs will know to look for it and will recognize it when they see it.
We always spend the last hour of this class on “Show-and Tell.” Class members are encouraged to bring in items that reflect their progress in telling their stories. Not all class members participate – people are sometimes hesitant to talk about their own work, and others fear that their work won’t measure up. But each time I’ve taught the class, members have proudly shown us framed artifacts of their family history, quilts, Christmas ornaments, scrapbooks, photo albums, notebooks, and written family histories. I always learn something from this session.
Before I teach this class again this fall, I’ll review my slides carefully and test the links to make sure they are up-to-date and accurate. The online environment for genealogy research is changing all of the time, and I need to make sure I’m providing the best information. I’m also looking forward to meeting new genealogy friends and adding a few members to our WAGS roster.
What a wonderful class that would be to attend! I'm going to make that spreadsheet with all my subscriptions! Great post!
Thanks for the refresh! I’ve got work to do. Oh, and I’m using spreadsheets for almost everything now. Thanks for your help. Excel is great.