Learn about free and paid every-word searchable eBooks that can be used online or downloaded to a Kindle, smartphone, or iPad.
T248 2:30-3:30 p.m. Thursday Investigating Your Ancestors
Learn how genealogists can use criminal investigation techniques to identify ancestors, record evidence, analyze and draw accurate conclusions, and write comprehensive but concise reports.
F301 8:00-9:00 a.m. Friday Reporting the Facts: Record as You Go
Learn to record your research as you work to ensure accuracy, best analysis and use of facts, and adequate time to write the results well.
F329 11:00-12:00 noon Friday Digitizing Your Way to Organization
See how a scanner with an automatic document feeder and Adobe Acrobat software can organize those mountains of paper on your kitchen table.
I’m speaking on several of my favorite topics at the upcoming NGS conference in Charleston, South Carolina. My Scots-Irish genes often win out over my obsessive German genes to the extent that I’m always looking for an easier or faster way to do something. But then the German genes kick in and demand that my schemes have order and clear processes. It’s really a pretty balanced match, but I wouldn’t have wanted to be the first Scots-Irish person who married the German in my family, or vice versa. What a match! At any rate, my ancestral combos lead me to think in ordered ways about how to do something faster and better, and that’s how I came up with all four of the sessions I’m presenting in Charleston. I hope that some of you will attend and learn from my mistakes, since I always tell my audiences that I have learned things the hard way so they don’t have to.
In my previous other life years ago as a commissioned police officer and detective, I attended the police academy and advanced courses to learn about criminal investigative techniques. One day I came up with the idea of a genealogy lecture while pondering how many of the skills I had learned as a police investigator apply equally to researching family history: identifying the right individual by his or her modus operandi (MO)—characteristics, habits, and associates; carefully analyzing clues and drawing accurate conclusions; writing the results of our work in clear, concise reports; and putting together a case that a jury of our peers (other genealogists) would find reasonable and correct. Investigating Your Ancestors demonstrates the similarities in criminal investigation techniques and good genealogical research methodologies. My law enforcement experience also helped me understand the criminal court records where I find most of my ancestors, but that’s a different class.
In eBooks for Genealogists I’ll be discussing and demonstrating myriad sources of electronic books—both old and new—available online for free or inexpensive download to your home computer, iPad, Kindle, Smartphone, or similar device. You’ll also see how to download, store, organize, and use these books. While you might not find it comfortable to read an entire 500-page county history on a small cell phone screen, you should be thrilled to have such reference books in versions that are every-word searchable at your disposal wherever you travel. You may find yourself sitting back in the woods at an old cemetery wishing you could remember the name of that one ancestor that you found in the history of the adjoining church. With the eBook version stored on your phone or portable device, you could simply whip that device out, search for what you do remember, and have the information at hand in seconds—while you’re still onsite at the cemetery where you need it.
We genealogists are enthusiastic about the hunt; we think nothing of going on as many research trips as we can afford in a single month. However, we’re often not as eager to carefully sift through, analyze, and write up the results of that research. Isn’t it easier to just make photocopies of everything and pile it on the dining room table to deal with later? In Reporting the Facts: Record As You Go, I’ll be providing an alternative by suggesting that we learn to write our research reports as we actually do the work. For our personal research, this means we always have a current report that acts as a road map to inform us where we last stopped and what we still need to do when we pick up a project again. In our work for others, it ensures that we don’t use all the allotted time researching and then lack adequate time to write a comprehensive and clear report. This BCG-sponsored lecture just might help you begin to think about your gathering and stashing habits in a different way.
And speaking of all those piles of paper on the dining room table or spare bed in the guest room, Digitizing Your Way to Organization offers a solution to overwhelming stacks and the inability to find what you need without an hours-long physical search. See how a scanner or digital camera can help you skip the paper and create most of your research files electronically or process the piles of paper you already have into electronic files. Then, using free or inexpensive software, you’ll be able to organize and label the electronic files so that you can search for and find a particular item in seconds rather than having to dig through five boxes of paper. If you stay on top of the paper you bring home (or brought home long ago), and digitize whenever possible, you should begin to see a real difference in your ability to find what you need—from relevant articles in magazines to actual images of ancestral documents.
I’m looking forward to seeing Charleston’s colorful houses and historic areas, even though I had no ancestors that I know of in that area. I have learned to say that I know of because as sure as anything, the week after I’ve traveled to a wonderful conference where I’ve learned all kinds of new things but didn’t do local research because I didn’t have any ancestors there, the very next week I’ll find a document that reveals a new ancestor who lived just across the river from the conference site. And even if I don’t, going to any conference is worthwhile because everything we learn helps us in our own research. I can go to a New England conference where they talk about Pilgrims and witches, and I stubbornly say to myself, “Harumph! What do they know about hill people in East Tennessee or the Ozarks?” But I learn methods and techniques from every single lecture at any conference, and that knowledge applies equally to my ancestors.
I hope to see y’all at the NGS conference in Charleston, South Carolina.
Pamela Boyer Sayre, CG, CGL
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