Friday, February 6, 2015

Genealogy Do-Over Week 5: Toolbox and Citations~Learning From Past Mistakes

Genealogy Do-Over Week 5 has us looking at building a Research Tool Box & Citing Sources.


My Research Toolbox only needed a little help, but my early source citations...well, that's another story!

My Research Toolbox
  Thanks to Thomas McEntee and his Reserach Toolbox Webinars, I started a Toolbox several years ago.
   For the web sites that I visit daily, I have them bookmarked across my Google Browser.  They are accessable quickly and a good reminder of what places I can search.
  My other bookmarked sites are kept in Evernote. As I find sites that I want to use again, I add it to my list. They are categorized by topic such as Geographic Area, Type of Record, Surname, etc. Part of my Do-Over this week was to go through and make sure the links still worked and that I had each link in the correct topic.  Having a Research Toolbox has been a real asset to my research. It's a fantastic resource and time saver. There is no way I could remember all the various places where information can be found. Often I will go back and look at the list and see a link that I had forgotten about. If you haven't taken the time to put together a Research Toolbox, I would highly recomend it. 

Citing Sources

   For the most part, my sources are cited using the source template in Legacy Family Tree-that is the sources that I cited after the source template was introduced. The earlier ones, well all I can say is I tried. These older ones need to be corrected using proper source citation practices. For some reason, I thought "Personal Knowledge"....that was all....was a proper source citation or there's also those that just say something like, "1920 SC census". 
 Studing Evidence Explained by Elizabeth Shown Mills has helped me to understand why the templates are set up the way they are and to be able to tweak them if I am trying to cite a source that is not available in the template.
   This has also helped when I am at a research facility. By learning a basic pattern of citing sources, I can now add a somewhat decent citation to my notes. My old notes left out some of the information that I needed and would result in having to look up a source again and rewrite the information.
     So, as I go through each family, making sure each piece of information is sourced, and sourced correctly is part of my plan. It may take a while but hopefully, I have learned from past mistakes and not repeat them as I add to my family tree.

How is your Do-Over going? I would love to hear from you.
Thanks so much for stopping by!



2 comments:

  1. Looking good, Cheri. Yes, if we could only go backward and do-over those early members & resources in our trees!
    And re bookmarks - I once found I had three (3!) bookmarks for one website, done at different times. Now it's in my Research Toolbox. You're looking very well-organized! Cheers.

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    1. Well, trying anyway! Glad to know that I am not the only one who had more than one bookmark for the same site! Lol! Thanks so much for your encouraging words, Celia!

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