A New Year - A New Attitude: 2012 Genealogy Goals

2011 in Review

The great clean-up is over. New junk, dirt, and mess creep into the house, but it’s not overwhelming. The genealogy files are in decent shape, though photographs and mementos need some work. In 2011 I found some neat new tools and a lot of new information on my husband’s ancestors, but research on my own families has been very sluggish.

Figuring out how to do my family trees on my Weebly website (Greta’s Genealogy) was a significant move forward for me, even though entering information did take away from research time. I can see that it will be a good way to share information as well as a way to make me organize my information and sources. I also made greater use of Google Maps, especially in combination with address studies for particular ancestors or families.

Transcription was a great failure from last year’s resolutions (which term, note, I am no longer using, having switched to “goals”). I’m hoping that a focus on “getting all the stuff” for a particular person or family will cut things down to size: find document, log document, digitize and organize document, transcribe document, analyze document, record findings, and blog about findings. Make sure new information and conclusions are properly reflected in my genealogy program, Ancestry tree (when possible), and Greta’s Genealogy.

What Needs to Be Done in 2012

I still have to work on the time thing: What are the best ways to carve out time, even small scraps, and what can I do on days when I come home from work exhausted?

Research

I hope that my research and reporting goals are sufficiently modest for this year: Consolidate the information on my Reunion program, Ancestry Public Member trees, and Weebly website up through the great-great grandparent level and complete my Genealogy Toolboxes on Greta’s Genealogy and Greta’s Genealogy Blog. Be ready by next year to start the real research challenges: the Moore, Floyd, and Lewis families, and my Lizzie Smith brick wall.

Blog

My blog is no longer the time-sucker it used to be, but I still believe I need to make greater use of it as a research tool, particularly to highlight and organize my research, with somewhat higher posting frequency while keeping the quality and relevance up. A couple of features I would like to run regularly:

1. Question(s) of the Week: In these posts I hope to take advantage of the knowledge of this blog’s readers and my fellow genealogy bloggers by posting my latest problems and conundrums, particularly questions on where to find information and how to use technology.

2. Flip #1 around to (I hope) pay back readers and other genealogy bloggers who have helped me out by reporting on information, tools, events, etc. that have been useful to me me: books, posts on other blogs, websites, lectures and webinars, etc.

That’s it. Keep it simple.

For my readers in 2012: I hope you find joy in your research, inspiration in your blogging, and happiness in your “real” life. You continue to make blogging one of the most enjoyable and rewarding parts of my life.