Reliable research begins with the  Genealogical Proof Standard   What's ahead for family history and genealogy work next year? And how best to prepare? One of my big goals has been finished, which is recent backup of online trees onto my own computer. Most of my work has been over the past years has been in Ancestry.com online trees. Now I want to learn how to back that clean tree up into the cloud, as well as onto some portable hard drives.  Also, I combined the two backed-up trees. Next, I need to find and merge any remaining duplicate profiles. While doing that work, I will try to apply "spit and polish" to each profile touched. Spit? Polish?  Merriam-Webster says it is in part: " attention to cleanliness, orderliness, smartness of appearance ."  Why bother with such nit-picking? I think that by making online profiles not only well-researched and attractive, we can draw others to the stories told on those profiles. This is why I've always worked in publ...

Research Workshop We had a full house at Friday's Research Workshop, which is what our superstar SKCGS Member Winona calls our Members-only monthly hours at the Kent FamilySearch Center.  CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 DEED by David Gurteen: "Research Workshop" Every person with whom I had time to talk, whether new to research or life-long genealogists, talked about the stories they have uncovered and their inner pressure to tell them. Some feel most comfortable telling them only to family members who are interested; others want to put those stories in our Auburn Library Vertical Files, and/or in the files at the White River Museum or other local archives.   Ideas which came up in our conversations included adding those memories, stories, photos and record images to profiles in the FamilySearch Family Tree, on Wikitree  profiles  and even in Ancestry, MyHeritage or other public (or private, but shared with family) trees. Not everyone is comfortable sharing their research onlin...