Explore!

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Creator: Gregg Evans Copyright: © 2025 GCE Inc.

Gregg Evans in the above comic illustrates a common dilemma, so I want to ask: What excites you? What fills you with satisfaction? 

There is a reason that every genealogy and family history expert advises starting projects with a research question, and demonstrates crafting the query into a research plan to save time and money, and success. Success inspires us work through hard problems. 

I want to ask another question though, about how you enjoy learning. Whether researching your family, or learning about how to do better research, we all have different learning styles. Do you learn best all by yourself in a quiet place, or with others such as a research group, class, seminar or college class? Is in-person best for you, or recorded sessions you can view at your leisure? Do you prefer reading, listening, or watching videos?

Since covid-19 propelled both online meeting and education, we have an abundance of choices. Choose what makes you  happy and will lead to success. 

If you love live events, many genealogy and history groups meet in person; some of those events are also available remotely. These "hybrid" sessions allow attendees to ask questions of the presenters, and for many, that sense of "being there" is worth adding to the calendar. Some conferences such as the up-coming Rootstech have both live-only and live sessions available for later viewing. The National Genealogical Society (NGS) sometimes does the same. Even Legacy Webinars offers many live sessions, which are often free to view for a week for non-subscribers. Many large genealogy societies do this for annual conferences; be sure to check ConferenceKeeper if you enjoy this sort of event; see our own offerings at SKCGS.org. 

If you want a college course, Boston University offers one last round of courses; sign up soon! There are others, some of which are in-person only. The NGS offers a lot of education, some in-person and some virtual. There are many excellent institutes and study courses if you need deadlines to keep you on track.

Final thoughts: what is your goal? Do you want to dig more deeply into your own family history? Learn to better present your findings to others? Are you interested in professionally researching? Do you want to dig into certain groups or with particular projects, such as those in your local genealogy or history group, FamilyTreeDNA or Wikitree? Think about what makes you happy, what you want to do, then choose opportunities which will take you there.

Valorie Zimmerman

 

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Send your stories to m.strickland@skcgs.org


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