Study Group, courtesy of OpenClipart   Desperation drove me to my first study group at university. A fellow student invited me, and the group swapped ideas about how to remember the masses of information we were given in an early-morning class. It really helped all of us, I think, and I was grateful.  South King County Genealogical Society incorporated as "educational in character and devoted exclusively to furthering genealogical research and interest in family and local history." We offer lots of choices, and discuss other educational opportunities here in the blog. See Barbara Mattoon's series on "Your Genealogy Education Plan, Parts One and Two , "  along with many other discussions of podcasts, seminars, videos, books, conferences.  Copyright 2016 Blaine T. Bettinger Debbie Parker Wayne When some of us found Blaine Bettinger and Debbie Parker Wayne's book Genetic Genealogy in Practice and began discussing it in our Genetic Genealogy/DNA group , the i...

Courtesy of Amethyst Studio from The Noun Project What Do You Seek? There's an old story about the cop walking his beat when he encounters an old man on his hands and knees under the street light. "What are you looking for, buddy?" The reply: "I'm looking for my car keys." Cop says, "there are no cars right close. Where did you lose them?" Reply: "I dropped them when getting out of my car, but the light is here!" Do you sometimes feel that way while you are searching for records, and finding nothing? Have you considered that Ancestry or FamilySearch might not have the records you seek?   Or that the record you wish for was never created? What's the Plan? When I began doing genealogy research, I never had a plan, didn't know one could plan research, and I'm sure I would have thought the idea of taking research time to create a plan was ridiculous!   These days, some of my research is still unplanned. After studying Research Li...

Courtesy PublicDomainImages.net "Car Burning Rubber" Deadlines I used to dread writing reports, from grade school on. Deadlines caused dread, and there was no pleasure (or learning) from scrabbling together all the sources into something readable. When I began doing genealogy research, writing reports of my findings never entered my mind! Not even when I found massive help from various books and articles. I never saw myself then as a contributor to the body of knowledge; only as a consumer.  From Consumer to Contributor https://www.wikitree.com/ Two things changed my viewpoint. The first was finding Wikitree, where I took responsibility for the linked profiles for many of the family members I had found through my years of research. The Wikitree focus on sourcing, collaboration and narrative, not just a bare skein of facts, began to change that "consumer" stance, into becoming a contributor.  Focus and Collaboration The other event that taught me how to contribute be...

 Odd title to this blog, I know! But I've been learning some things in our latest study group, where we are reading " Research Like A Pro " by Diana Elder and we're following the strategy (RLP). I can't say that some of it is not painful. For instance, while compiling a Locality Research Guide I wanted to follow those meaty links I was finding so much! However, that step comes after we finish the critical parts of those research guides, and get into the Research Planning step. Here are the Research Planning steps, restated in my own words: Research Like A Pro cover 1. State a clear objective, revised if necessary. 2. Summarize the important known facts 3. Clear, specific hypothesis (or multiple if necessary). 4. Identify the best sources to pursue to test your hypothesis/es. 5. Prioritize your research strategy. Of course each of us chose a research subject before we began meeting together, and began to refine a research objective, summarize the sources we alre...

A timeline gets you where you want to go! We've discussed timelines many times here on the blog. Here is one 2-year-old example: The Timeline: Your Guide Through the Twists and Turns of Research . In the latest SKCGS Study Group, working our way through "Research Like A Pro," by Diana Elder, AG with Nicole Dyer. The second chapter is all about how to use a timeline to analyze sources and likely evidence found in those sources.   But how exactly do you create one? And is one way better than another? Elder advocates for a spreadsheet or relational database. While most of us have not yet tried Airtable , the relational database she uses now, I tried creating the spreadsheet from the information I had been collecting in a timeline using Google Sheets. While it was useful as a place to collect the direct links to record images and a good prompt to create source citations, I didn't find it useful to reason out what was happening behind the records.  Here is a snippet of tha...

By Barbara Mattoon A couple of years ago I was looking for something to listen to while I decorated my Christmas tree.  Somehow, I had heard about Ezra Klein, so I figured out how to listen to one of his podcasts on my iPhone and I was hooked.  Since then, I have explored podcasts on many topics, but recently I have been partial to genealogy podcasts. Marketing guru Seth Godin says that podcasts are the new blogs.  (I listen to his podcast Akimbo, every week.) That could be, but I think there is still room for both forms of communication.  He also says that the backlist is as good as the current episode, and I totally agree with that.  With recently discovered podcasts, I frequently go back and listen to older episodes. “But”, you wail, “I don’t have TIME to listen to podcasts”.  Everyone’s needs and schedules are different, but I usually listen to an episode while I am preparing and eating my breakfast.  Less frequently, I listen while tra...