I love using the Internet to find information and collaborate with other researchers, and people in general. And I love using tech tools to help me be more efficient. I really love those tech tools that work behind the scenes, so to speak, that look for information while I'm doing other "stuff" 'cause who doesn't like to be more efficient?

However, while it's helpful to have tech tools, like Ancestry.com's Hints {or their shaking leaves}, MyHeritage's family tree hints, or even Mocavo's family tree hints. Those "hints" or just one tech tool in my Tech Tool Box. And, really, I only use them sparingly for my own personal research. They have their pros and cons. And the main con, in my opinion, is that they tend to lead new researchers astray by subconsciously suggesting that's the only way to research. And? It's not really researching. It's searching. And it's passive. And it's an algorithm that's doing the passive searching. {Which is a very fancy math formula that is powered by computer programs. And I've never really liked math all that much, so there's that.} And it's only looking in its own limited database of information - not anywhere or everywhere online and offline that the answer I am seeking may exist.

So, it's not really thorough or very complete, which is why it's a tool. A tool that's being controlled by an algorithm which are both guided by you and the family tree and the information you've provided to it, which may or may not be correct. To me, that spells T-R-O-U-B-L-E. But only if you haven't relegated this particular tool to your Tech Tool Box to be used when appropriate.

Also, I do check all my free and subscription-based databases online for documents and information that have been digitized. This is a part of my search Tech Tool Box.

But what do you do when you have done all that you can with your online resources? You use your online tech tools to find it offline, if anything exists. Following are some general Internet tips on how to locate online where information you need for your your family tree research might exist offline. Basically, it's using the Internet as an online Tech Tool to find resources and information offline. 

• Consult your Pedigree Chart and determine holes in your research. Do you have unsubstantiated information as birth, marriage, and/or death events? Do you have some information that is substantiated, but you could use some more evidence or maybe even better evidence? {Because while you love your Great Aunt Bernice and all those stories she tells, sometimes those stories sound a little too good to be true.} Or do you have holes where a birth, marriage, and/or death event should be? Start with the person where one of these above questions is answered with a "yes".
  
• Now that you have a person and event information that you are looking for, look at this person's other events. Where did they take place? Have no events and, thus, no locations for this person? Then look at the people around this person in your family tree. In what location were these people doing 'stuff', and where might their paths have crossed? Start with that location.
  
• Is the location you have just the state or does it include a city or town? Determine the county. Keep in mind county boundaries may have changed. To determine the county, I usually Google the city/town and state. Then taking that county, I use The Family Tree Resource Book for Genealogists edited by Sharon DeBartolo Carmack and Erin Nevius to determine record  and county information. I also look at their notes on state record availability. {Note: My edition of this reference book was published in 2004, and website URLs may have changed since then, but the information they provide is absolutely invaluable to me.}
  
• If you don't already know, determine what libraries with genealogical departments, genealogy libraries, or state archives are closest to you as well as the location you are looking in.  Those hard-to-get-to facilities might do look-ups or you can check the Family History Library's online catalog and perhaps rent some microfilm from them.
  
• Starting with the closest facility near you, check their online catalog of both books and microprint {includes microfilm and microfiche}. Also note that some libraries with genealogy departments and/or genealogy libraries don't have their microprint as a part of their online catalog, but as a separate index database. Or you might have to get outta of those pajamas and pink bunny slippers to visit in person to see what they have for microprint.
  
• Notate whether or not a facility has either books or microprint available for the county and state that you are needing to do research in. Also, sometimes it might just be a book for a state and not a specific county that you'll find some information {or more likely clues} on {or about} your ancestor.
  
• Make a list for each facility.
  
• If a facility is too far away for you to visit, see if they participate in inter-library loan of books or microfilm. {For example, in Texas, The Texas State Library and Archives participates in the inter-library loan program for their microfilmed county records. Thus, after checking out if closer facilities have what I'm looking for and they don't, then I check TSLA's website to see if they have it on microfilm for the county that I'm looking in. If they have what I need, then I go to my local library and order it for it to be delivered to my local library for me to view there. {This is cheaper than the $7.50 rental fee per microfilm roll from the Family History Library. Whether I'm working for a client or myself, I'm always keeping an eye out on the budget.}
  
• Then check the FHL's online catalog to see if they have any microfilm that can be rented for the location and/or event that is being searched. If they have what I'm looking for that I think might possibly yield some information, then I rent it online to be delivered to my local FHC. {Which for me happens to be my local library because they became an affiliate recently. YES!}
  
• If I can't find what I need from these facilities, then I turn to the original producer or keeper of the original document like county district clerk's offices. I do this by first consulting my copy of Carmack's and Nevius' The Family Tree Resource Book for Genealogists {which has more dog ears than my local humane society} to determine how things are organized by state and then by county. It also has some awesome "State Resources" lists.
  

Remember:

• Not everything is online.
  
• No technology tool can find your family tree for you all by itself, otherwise it wouldn't be called a tool. {It'd be called something like the "For $29.99 I Can Do All Your Research For You Robot". And wouldn't that be nice? But, really? For $29.99?}
  
• As a properly used tech tool, the Internet can help you to be more efficient with your time, your budget, and your online as well as offline research.
  

~Caroline

In the next few blog posts, I'll explain more about how I use the online catalog for my local library's genealogy department, how I use the online catalog for the genealogical library closest to me, and how I use other online tech tools to find offline repositories.


Sharon DeBartolo Carmack and Erin Nevius, editors. The Family Tree Resource Book for Genealogists: The Essential Guide to American County and Town Sources. Cincinnati, Ohio: Family Tree Books, 2004.

Okay. I did a sufficient amount of a lead-in to this blog post yesterday. But to bring it all together, let me just say that it seems that many of us have already adapted some kind of system of recording where we have researched [as opposed to 'searched' and for clarification on that, look at yesterday's post] in some pretty nifty ways like employing MS Office OneNote or Evernote. And we may have already come up with a system within the genealogy database software that we currently use. And we're happy with it.

From the comments yesterday, though, I can tell that many of us are not recording our online searching ~ positives or negatives ~ in a log or form. Because if we have a positive find and have recorded the source information then recording it into a log would be redundant. And the negative searches are just not that important because the records or information availability changes rapidly online and we're in the search phase, not the research phase. [I'm generalizing and summarizing from the comments yesterday and if you don't agree, that's great. Let us know in comments below. This kind of discussion is a good and necessary part of identifying online workflow processes. =) ]

And this is where I might upset some New Agers. I would politely disagree with the thinking on negative results. They are important. It's just the thought of recording all the negative results down that we may come across in a just 3-hour period alone of online searching on a log or form completely and utterly horrifies us.

The search that comes kind of naturally [at least for me] to us New Age Genealogists who tend to do some free and uninhibited preliminary searching online can be a fast and furious kind of search, especially if it's a 3-day holiday-weekend-research-bender-and-we're-not-stopping-until-we-find-the-answer-or-narrow-down-where-the-answer-might-be-offline.

And come Sunday evening, we're bleary-eyed from too much searching, junk food, and caffeinated products [Is it possible to have too much searching, junk food, and caffeinated products while looking for our ancestors?!?], and we are tempted to jot some notes down quickly before shutting the laptop closed and passing out without marking down where we went online that weekend in a nice little log or form.

'Cause the thought of logging all that down in a form is just not possible at any point during the search phase. During the search phase, we're ripping through sites, chasing down leads, and basically we're in an online search groove, baby. And afterwards we've no clue as to exactly where we've been. We know what we found. We've a system for that. But we don't have a good system for the negative results that we might need to revisit later for a wayward brother to our great grandmother who we had no clue even existed [the brother, not the great-grandmother].

So. What to do?

Some sites like Ancestry.com keep a recent history of your searching on their site. And the links to those are in the bottom right hand corner of your Ancestry.com Home Page. [Very nice.]

But other sites don't have search histories available. At least, I couldn't find them.

But you can use your Browser History. You know. That Big Brother kinda feature that no one likes and people tend to clean out on a regular basis for various reasons? The Browser History records every single unique URL address we visited in link form as well as the date we visited each URL in the order that we visited them. [Ohmigosh, right?] And each of the 3 main browsers has a history with different features. For example, Firefox allows you to tag each line item or URL visit with tags. And Internet Explorer 9 [IE9] allows you to have the Browser History in a sidebar so that you can watch it record where you go as you go. [Which I think looks really cool.]

And I tested Ancestry.com, GenealogyBank.com, and FamilySearch.org on all 3 browsers to see exactly how the recordings look. I was pleased with how it recorded Ancestry.com's visits; extremely pleased with how it recorded GenealogyBank.com's visits; and a wee disappointed with how FamilySearch.org's visits were recorded. Why the disappointment? Because it didn't record who I was searching for on FamilySearch.org like it did for the other 2 sites. Check out the screenshot below to see what I mean. [It's the IE9 one because I like it the best for some reason. Click for a larger image.]

Now. This is a revelation. I use my Browser History all the time in this manner subconsciously in all kinds of research [not just genealogy and family history search/research], but I never thought about capturing the info in a screen capture, placing it into my note-taking system, and annotating it with some info, like, 'this is (N)' for negative results in a red font color, or something like that. You know, recording the negatives? And for that matter, recording everywhere I had been. I just woke up yesterday morning and had this Ah-ha! kind of moment. [What can I say? Sometimes the ancestors wake me up with their stories and sometimes it's the Research Fairy.]

And the more I got to thinking about it, it's kind of revealing to see how I went about my free and uninhibited online searching by looking in my browser's history log. [Can you say, "Patterns?"]

So. Tomorrow I'll have a FREE and quick video tutorial showing you the process that I've created to record these Search Logs in OneNote, Evernote, and FTM2012, and how I would annotate them quickly to suit needs. [At least my needs.]

'Cause, folks, our computers, and especially our browsers, have been recording our Search Logs all along for us...

...making it the easiest Search Log we may ever use. [Until something even better comes along. Like, you know, tomorrow.]

***UPDATE: Here's the video, "How to easily record a log of your online searches". Enjoy! =) ***
~Caroline

To Re-cap This Whole Organizational Stuff:
We've already talked about [O.K. I've talked about] what to do with all the stuff you find out about your family's history and how to organize it ~ both IRL [In Real Life] and in your fantasy world [Oops. I meant on the computer.]

What's next? How to be organized while you're looking for the information that you so desperately want about your family.  I mean, it won't be any fun gossiping about Great-Aunt Bernice and her poor choices if when you go to look through that incredibly long list of bookmarks, you can't find the link for the website that had that incredible story [With sources. Hey, if you're gonna dream, dream big.] about how Great-Aunt Bernice took off one day with a..." [I thought I'd let you fill in the blank.]  

You might think, "Caroline, I would never do that. I mean, I only have maybe 10 - okay 15 - bookmarks. I could never have so many that I wouldn't be able to find that awesome story about my Great-Aunt Bernice."

[Big sigh.] Yeah. That's what I thought, too. Pre-G [Pre-Genealogy]. But it will happen. Remember how I said these ancestors will multiply like rabbits? Well, each one comes with at least 2 stories. They were born. Then they died. [Hey, I didn't say they were all going to be exciting.] And think for a moment about how many people live in your house. I'm not very good at math, but if every living person has at least 1 story and you multiply that by how many people live in your house with you, that could mean you have at least 1 story if you live alone [Not counting your cats.], or if you have adult children that have permanently camped out in your basement because they are on the "hey-they-don't-have-to-pay-rent-you-cook-their-meals-iron-their-clothes-basically-do-everything-for-them" program [And where can I sign up for that?], then you're going to have a whole lot more stories. [See how I cleverly sidestepped that whole math business?]

Anywho. There's a TON of stuff online that can make your online search so much easier while looking for your rabbits' stories. [Oops. I mean ancestors' stories.] And my original idea was to break it down into several posts and try to make it kind of interesting. But that was "Pre-Thomas and his toolbox". 

While listening to Thomas MacEntee's webinar on April 6th, I thought, "Oh Crap. I don't need to be listening to this before I write my post. I mean. You know. What goes in, comes out kinda thing?" I would like to say that I'd heard of every little thing he talked about, but I can't. Okay, I knew most of it. [I'm online. A lot. So you don't have to be.] But honestly? The thought of re-crafting everything, putting my own spin on it, and coming up with a better than [or equally as good] analogy as "toolbox", really tired me out.

But then I suddenly had this great idea. [Uh-oh. Look out.] Why don't I just send you over to Thomas' webinar, which is now available on CD from Legacy Family Tree for regularly $12.95, but available at the introductory price of just $9.99 at the time of the writing of this blog post. [And just between you, me, & the gatepost? It's worth WAY more than that.]

[Ambulance sirens screeching enough to wake the dead.]

But wait. There's more.



The CD comes with a link to download a 5-page handout. [And the handout wasn't even given out with the live webinar, folks.]

So, here's the link for Thomas MacEntee's webinar, "Building a Research Toolbox" : http://www.legacyfamilytreestore.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=WTOOLBOX

Could it get any easier? Not really. [Sometimes, I have the best ideas.]

And? That's the end of the Getting Started Series, but it's the beginning of your research both online and offline. Or perhaps it's the continuation because maybe you'd already started. Either way, it's time for research.

~Caroline