Confessions of a Twenty-something Family Historian

I am unorganized. In every aspect. Always have been and probably will continue to be, though every so often I decide to at least temporarily remedy the situation and move things around in a way that at least looks organized from a hundred feet by someone less organized than myself. Well, despite the “and probably will continue to be” pessimism above, I am about to undertake a massive “get it together” weekend and while my genealogical materials are just a small part of the task, they are part of the task. So I will be digging those loose papers out from under the bed and unscattering them from across my desk and putting into what other, sane people would consider order.

“So how am I going to do that?”  I will ask on your behalf. Well, first things first, I need to decide on a organizational method. And there are a lot of prescribed methods floating around! I think I’m going with the Ahnentafel method of numbering my peoples and each head of household will get their own folder which will contain their family group sheet and an contents sheet that lists the records contained. Direct ancestors will get a red file and indirect will get a blue file. And ancestors that have done heinous acts will get a nice black file!

As I enter the information on the documents I have for each family/individual I will save each file to my dropbox folder so that I can stop duplicating my previous finds. I think I have about a dozen copies of my great great grandfather’s death certificate now… and I sadly get excited each time I stumble across it on the microfilm.

The next stop in my efforts to stop being a slob with my genealogy is to organize my software databases. I’m going to start from scratch once my papers are filed away and actually add my source information and then scan the documents and add them to my media folder (which also lives in my dropbox folder so I can stop carrying around the big bag of files when I go to the library).

Since this is about the third time in the last year I have set out to become organized, I think I should probably make a more hearty attempt at being successful this time. Have you made an attempt to organize your stuff lately? If so how successful were you? And tips are always appreciated.. umm.. monetarily or the advice kind.

I had a lot planned for this week and didn’t seem to accomplish much. It’s nice to have a lazy week, though I should probably wait until the blog loses it’s new car smell.

I have begun work on a series of web pages that will be devoted to specific localities and surnames that I research. The first one that will launch will be a comprehensive resource site for Carter County, Tennessee and will be followed by other Tennessee counties including Washington and Sullivan Counties of east Tennessee. Some planned features are extensive lists of available records and where they can be obtained, research tips, county histories, vital record scans and an on-demand record lookup service. These sites are a few months from launch but I am very excited. I have wanted an alternative to the USGenWeb sites for sometime as they are rarely updated data or design wise. So lots of reading on xhtml and css are in my future.

I’m also excited about the announcement of Family Tree DNA’s Family Finder DNA test (see post below) and am excited to announce that an interview is in the works with Bennett Greenspan, President and CEO of Family Tree DNA. I hope to have that up in the next week or so along with an article on DNA testing.

As an added bonus, I have five Google Wave nomination invites up for grabs for the first give people to request one by emailing me at michael@geneacentric.com. Note that these are nominations so you will get an invite but its not instant.. still much quicker than waiting for google to invite you.

Family Tree DNA has announced a new DNA test for genealogists that will identify not just ancestors and relatives on the maternal line or the paternal line but also from previously neglected maternal father and paternal mother’s ancestors. The test, based on autosomal DNA rather than mtDNA and Y chromosome dna, opens DNA doors that to my knowledge haven’t been explored in genealogy.

I am very excited about the testing range, five generations, as several of my brickwalls are in this range. I am not familiar with paternal line and have yet to work that line back more than the last 30 years. This test could possibly locate relatives within the last 100 years that I could work from. Or maybe help prove or disprove whether my great great great grandmother is the Mary that lived on one side of my great great great great grandparents or the one that lived on the other side. I have been hoping for a test like this for years and have been putting of the mtDNA and Y chromosome tests hoping that this exact test would come along.

I plan to be one of the first to send in my DNA for the people in the white coats to inspect! The test will be available mid-March and more information can be found at FamilyTreeDNA.com and an FAQ on Family Finder can be found here.

I am a big fan of dropbox. And you should be too. If you are unfamiliar, go to Dropbox.com and sign up for an account. You get 2 gigabytes of space for free and will change the way you use computers forever and you will officially not be the last person to hop on the cloud computing bandwagon. So what is cloud computing? Short answer, you store your files on a server that is accessible from any computer or device with an internet connection. You can work on a database on your home PC and save it to your dropbox folder and when you log into your netbook or iphone at the library you magically have that same database to use without any effort on your part.

I have my Family Tree Maker folder stored in my dropbox account (if you are interested in the hows or whys of doing this yourself feel free to ask) so I have access to my database and media anywhere I go. I made a mistake last weekend while doing research at the local history library that doesn’t have wifi. I added extensive amounts of data to Family Tree Maker and then headed home where I logged onto my home pc to work on some leads that I developed and noticed that the information I had added was missing. I closed down Family Tree Maker and started up my netbook that I had used at the library. I opened Family Tree Maker to double check that the data was still there… but it was gone! Four hours of research gone (well, I still had my paper copies but it’s still a lotta stuff to type back in and create source info for). So what happened? The library didn’t have wifi so the file on my netbook never uploaded to dropbox and when I connected to the wifi at home with my pc the newest version of my database uploaded and replaced the one on my netbook. Normally not a big deal as you can revert to previous versions of the file by right clicking on the file in the dropbox folder and choosing the previous version of the file that you want to get back. However, I didn’t synch my netbook to dropbox so dropbox saw the actual “new” database as old and did away with it.

So.. the short of it is this: If you use dropbox and change a file make sure that you synch the device that you were using to dropbox BEFORE using a different device connected to the same dropbox account.

I do highly recommend Dropbox though so if you want to give it a try click on the link and sign up (if you click on my link (any of the nice blue words above) you’ll get bonus space and I will too.. it’s like exchanging gifts that neither of us have to pay for!)

It’s inevitable that we amass countless numbers of “unrelateds” in our tireless efforts to find the ones that belong to us. Every obituary copy that I have in my files seems to have at least one or two stragglers next to “mine” and there’s always that tombstone hanging out behind my relatives that is just screaming “HEY LOOK AT ME! I’M BACK HERE AND I BELONG TO SOMEONE TOO!” And lets not think about city directories… I mean there are dozens of names staring up at me practically sneering “Yeah, you think you’re better than me just cause we aren’t related?” So I’ve decided to give back to all of these poor unclaimeds and am now announcing a new weekly series that you will find only here (or on the blogs of the people who thought it up before me, but don’t steal my thunder just yet!).. a true geneacentric.com ex-clues-ive I like to call OTHER PEOPLE’S RELATIVES. Don’t get me wrong though cause I’m not selfish.. you’re all invited to do the same on your blogs. So with only slight further ado, I beg that you return Friday for the first installment.

I was at the local regional history library yesterday, which is part of the public library system that I am employed, and was shocked to learn that they no longer allow the use of digital cameras in any capacity to copy information stored within their walls. I was in the midst of photographing a few pages of a book with a big sticker on the front that tells me that the item cannot be photocopied (makes sense cause it was old and looked the part) when I was told (very politely and apologetically) that photography was no longer allowed (unless I get permission from the library manager). Which was shocking simply because I had been told previously by staff that I could use my camera to photograph city directory pages and maps that could not be copied due to fragility or size.

The reasons for this decision are familiar to me as a library staff member, I just don’t agree with any of them. They fall under the same “reasoning” that prevents the public from scanning microfilm to an image or .pdf file. The fear that someone could bypass the arbitrary number of pages of a work that can be copied under fair use via the also arbitrary and corporate minded copyright law of the United States. Which I am sure as library staff I should be championing cause it really would be the worst of the worst if someone were to scan the latest Janet Evanovich and put it online for the masses to read cause that hurts the publishing industry who are so kind to let us purchase large quantities of their product and in turn let people have access to it for free. Yeah, I know writers have to make a paycheck too cause they have glamour shot sessions to schedule and ghostwriters to support but thats neither here nor there when it comes down to the fact that a large segment of their audience will not buy their book.. they will get it from the library, read it in the bookstore or download it online. And surprise, they still sell enough to make profits year after year. How does this connect to genealogy? How does it not! An author’s right to ownership to their work is fine, but it was never intended to be protected by copyright law until the end times; such notions are a modern invention. I remember being told that we are not allowed to use the library’s microfilm scanner to scan to digital files as it would violate the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) as scanning a document and transposing it to an electronic platform without asking the copyright holders permission could make us liable. Of course it’s all okay if you’re just scanning to paper? I don’t even want to think about how (those that should read up on fair use) would feel about me scanning a paper copy taken from the microfilm in the comfort of my home.

The other argument I’ve been given other places is that “Flashes on cameras are damaging to paper” and when countered with “I’m not going to use a flash” I would get “Well, maybe you wouldn’t but the next person would” and so on. To this I can’t possible see how using a camera, especially without a flash, could do any more harm to a book than if I were to sit and transcribe the same book (nevermind that transcribing should be viewed as heinous as if I were taking a photo) with each page exposed to lamp light on the table for several more minutes that it would have been exposed while I snapped a few shots with my iphone.

I know I’m ranting, but family historians should be aware of copyright law and how it can hinder what we do. Especially when the law is being used without much insight into the particulars of what it actually allows and forbids.