Beginners Guide to finding out
“Who you think you are”
The basic steps of family history research are :
1.
Write down
everything you know about your family.
2.
Contact other
family members, especially older ones, and find out as much as you can from
them. Carefully record who told you what and when.
3.
Bring together what
you have found out from all your different sources. You may find you have
conflicting versions of almost anything, differing names, dates, etc.
4.
Confirm what you
have found using official records, etc.
5.
Fill in the gaps in
your family tree.
For the Computer literate Genealogist,
here are 4 steps to creating a Genealogy Research Log and get organized. Source:
Family Tree Magazine.
1.
Decide
on a format. You want to be able to search the data
and sort them. A spreadsheet in Microsoft Excel or Google Drive would work, or
a note-taking tool such as Evernote.
2.
Decide
what data you will record. This will determine
the structure of your log. A few suggestions are : Ancestor/Family Name ;
Record/Resource Title; Information sought ; Repository (i.e. Library, Family
History Centre) ; Outcome ; Source citation (i.e. Ancestry.com) ; Date logged ;
Status and Notes.
3.
Set
up your document in your chosen format. A
spreadsheet in Google Drive will allow you to access your log on any computer
with internet access and on a smart phone.
4.
Maintain
your log. This is the hardest part, but your log
won’t do you any good if you don’t use it. You could keep it open on your
desktop and enter any genealogy to-dos that occur to you, just remember to save
any changes to your log. The next time you plan to visit a library or genealogy
website, for example you can sort your log by the Repository/ Website Column,
and take care of all those tasks.
Rotorua
District Library has computers for your use on the ground floor, with access to
Google Drive, you just have to bring a USB Storage device to save your desktop
copy to.
