Sankofa bird; public domain image. "The “Sankofa” is a metaphorical symbol used by the Akan people of Ghana, generally depicted as a bird with its head turned backward taking an egg from its back. It expresses the importance of reaching back to knowledge gained in the past and bringing it into the present in order to make positive progress."  https://sankofa.org/about   Looking Back; Looking Forward Thoughtful week here. For many reasons, I've been looking back—and forward, and thinking deeply about both.  My term as president of the South King County Genealogical Society ends May 2025. If you are considering stepping up to ask the membership to entrust you with that responsibility, please contact me or another Board member for help to prepare you. Read about the duties of the President here .  Term Limits According to our Bylaws  Section 5.4.3: "No President or Vice President shall serve more than two consecutive terms in the same office." I want to choose how...

Best Reason to Throw a Party The best excuse to clean your house , I once read, is to ready it for a party . While cleaning house, I thought, is the same true about "writing it up"? Writing the stories of our ancestors and relatives is the culmination of our work. When we know that our place is welcoming to guests, we feel free to celebrate; telling stories of the past unlocks the lives of our families to all who hear them. Writing the stories is t he best excuse to research. Write while researching so that that your thoughts have somewhere to go‒directly into the notes, before they evaporate. Writing soothes the itch in the brain instead of sending us down rabbit holes. Now is a great time to get started writing, in preparation for Family History Month in October . Courtesy of the National Genealogical Society Writing tests our research and thinking It is while writing that holes in the story are exposed, inconsistencies glare, and leaps of logic fall flat. If our analysis...

Connecting people. Image courtesy of Dreamstime Doing Genealogy When we first start "doing genealogy" we're finding records, noting what we find, and trying to make sense of it all. As time goes on, we may turn into hobbyists, and begin using forms, consulting books, online repositories, and perhaps, building a tree on our computers, online, or both.  Eventually, it grows so much we don't know what we have, or where! This is where all those "genealogy do-over" or "filing Fridays" projects start. Both of those might be useful in your situation, but here is the ruling principle that can bring quality into your work and peace into your heart: genealogy projects using the Genealogical Proof Standard , the GPS . This principle is what professional genealogists use, but it is not for pros only. Fortunately, it's not a secret; it is the key to effective and efficient work for researchers all around the world.  Genealogical Proof Standard GPS Shapes a...

Free public domain CC0 image, courtesy RawPixel Crack the Nut, or First Things First What is your  greatest challenge when writing up your research work? For me, it was always writing citations . Key step for me to resolving this was to change my habits and make writing the citation the first thing I do, right in the planning stage. Lead with a Citation How does that make sense, when I've not even found the source I'm looking for? One of the first steps in a research project is planning; narrowing the topic (research question), gathering the context (history and locality), then ranking the possible sources of the needed information by ease of access, reliability, accessibility, cost, and chance of success in answering the question. In the planning stage, we have identified the databases or record groups we want to consult, so this is the right time to craft a citation. All the information we need, except for the specific records you will find is available, so Just Do It Now. A...

Generated with Bing ImageGenerator, February 4, 2024 at 1:54 PM Some years ago, Lowell Tuttle led a family history writing group which met at a local library, where the writers swapped ideas and drafts of their writing. Over time, health issues etc. caused the group to dwindle. Months ago, Lowell wrote to me (Valorie) with some rough drafts for which he wanted feedback. I wrote back with a few suggestions and asked if we could use part of what he had written here in the blog. Recently he wrote back, giving us his permission to do so. Note: While we have not been able to rekindle the Family History Writing group, we do have an online group:  https://skcgs.groups.io/g/Family-History-Writing . While it has not taken off, it is a place to send your drafts and ask for feedback.  Introduction Dear Readers:  My name is Lowell Allyn Tuttle. This is a Pep Talk on why you should write your or your family's stories. There are  hundreds of sources on HOW to write your or your fa...

Courtesy  https://picryl.com/amp/media/medelssohngenealogy-27a4b2 "AI for Genealogy" is a hot topic these days, but often it is discussed as if it's new. In fact, artificial intelligence (AI) has been used for all kinds of research for a long time. It all depends on how we "AI" define it. Remember, genealogy tree diagrams such as the above diagram were a revolution in how to think about and display family relationships. New: Chatbots Chatbot Courtesy VectorPortal.Com What's new is the chatbots such as ChatGPT. A recent article at ZDnet says, "Whether unlocking your phone through face recognition or telling Alexa to play a song, artificial intelligence has filtered into our everyday lives. Now, you can harness the power of AI to do your writing, too. At your command, AI chatbots can write that paper you have been dreading to start, write code, compose emails, generate art or even write Excel formulas for you.  "ChatGPT has made quite a splash, moti...

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...

COLLABORATION 2023 will be the Year of Collaboration for me, as President of this society. Everything we do will serve to foster collaboration, as we share resources, encourage and even give helpful criticism of work products as we work together for our mutual goals. The South King County Genealogical Society was described as "primarily educational" in our  Articles of Incorporation . Our mission is to Stimulate interest in genealogy and aid individual members in compiling their family records Seek genealogical and historical knowledge Preserve and perpetuate the records of our ancestors Promote the preservation of public and private genealogical materials So, we meet! And we write, and talk and listen, and help one another. EDUCATIONAL MEETINGS AND RESOURCES We've had monthly meetings since our founding, although early records are sparse. Within a few years, we began amassing a lending library (now housed at Auburn KCLS  and the Kent FHC ), hosting special interest and u...

Ten years ago the SoKingNews (newsletter) theme for the year was What's YOUR Story?   That question is still relevant today; let's make it our theme for 2023. Reprinted from SoKingNews, Volume 28, Number 4, January/February 2013 One of the most difficult hurdles to writing a story is putting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard in the modern genre) and getting that first sentence or paragraph flowing. The creative juices do not always gush; sometimes they barely drip! In a recent radio interview of a creative writing teacher, it was suggested that, for an exercise, to take a common object and write a paragraph about it. The steps she outlined were very simple: ·   Select your object ·   Think of all the ways you have encountered that object ·   Select one occurrence and answer these questions Where are you? Who is with you? What is happening? What are you feeling? In the interview she offered “the kitchen table” as the common object. Following the st...