Genealogy Jottings

The High-Definition Genealogist, Thomas MacEntee, presented a one-day seminar at the Denver Public Library over the weekend. I enjoyed his talks and came home with some good ideas to pursue:

• Work to become less isolated by pursuing more genealogy networking opportunities. I plan to check out a site he suggested called GenealogyWise at http://www.genealogywise.com. I am not a Facebook user, and Thomas says this could be a better alternative for a genealogist,
• Clean up my bookmarks and add some useful ones like Cyndi’s List of Birthdate Calendars & Calculators at http://cyndislist.com/births.htm#Birthdate and Wolfram-Alpha at http://www.wolframalpha.com for historical money and weather,
• Renew my efforts to track my research electronically. I am guilty of maintaining paper research logs that date back over thirty years. I need set up some spreadsheets and to make better use of the task feature in The Master Genealogist software,
• Decide whether and when to share my information on compiled trees at WikiTree (http://www.wikitree.com) or Family Search, and
• Document my goals and results. I like doing the research, but I tend to be lazy about writing up my results. I prepare and distribute a character sketch for one ancestor every Christmas, but I could do more. My husband/tech advisor has some good ideas for writing topics.

As always when I attend a seminar, I find the speaker’s enthusiasm infectious. I want to do all five of these things today! Of course I cannot do that because I am elbow-deep in preparing for a genealogy trip to Norway. So how long can I maintain this energy? We will know in July when I get back.