Book of Me Returns

New Year New Prompts

This post is a couple of days late but seeing as I have missed a couple of months I thought I would use this opportunity to return to this blog and highlight to anyone who may have missed it.

Julie Goucher who started this blog with a group of genealogy friends has started a new round of prompts for her Book of Me series. Some of them are new and as there are a number of new recruits many of the earlier prompts are also included and can be found on this page.

In 2013 I started these but did not get very far. Fortunately, I archived what I did and can go back and revisit them here is the first one.

So looking at what I wrote last time would I change anything.

I would say I do not read or bake as much as I would like. Attempts to lose weight did work, but I need to reassess, as I have started to put some back on. I want to lose more and maintain the loss.

Getting organised is the big thing and the older I get the more difficult it is to change the way I do, or rather don't do, things.

Bullet journalling worked, up to a point, but I am not one for writing everything down. I just want reminders for the important things, using calendar reminders works for most tasks, particularly where there is a deadline set.

Every one of us needs to consider what we want to leave of ourselves for those future generations.

Here are some links to the posts from Julie for this year so far

Introduction

Options

Julie's Book of Me

Preservation

Why we should all be concerned about preservation?

Yesterday (Tuesday 10th March) there was a fatal road traffic collision on the road that I use everyday to get to and from my place of work. Although, I was not an eyewitness, I saw the immediate aftermath from the other carriageway, whilst on my way to work and was shaken and saddened to think that someone was going to be hearing bad news later that day. 

Experiences such as these can bring home the uncertainties of life.

We all like to believe we will live in to old age but even the youngest of us should be aware that we only have a limited time in which to do things.

Geoff Rasmussen who hosts the Legacy Family Tree Webinars usually finishes with the saying "Life is short, do genealogy first". Would that we could all do this. 

If there is one resolution we should all have made this year it is this, I will endeavour to get my genealogy organized so that anyone can pick up where I left off.

Those who have taken up the challenge of Thomas MacEntee and embarked on the Genealogy Do Over are to be commended as are those who have not been in a position to need to take up the challenge. Many (including me) will have started with good intentions and other commitments have somehow got in the way.

Have we set ourselves unrealistic goals? Maybe

We all need to work at our own pace and the most important thing we can do is to leave something that our families will value rather than a jumbled mass of documents and unlabeled old photographs.

How do I know that what I have will be of use to others?

We have records and photographs that we have inherited (unless we are very unlucky) and those that we have found or created in our lifetime. 

We need to make it clear how these are important to our family and each of us will have our own way of doing this.

Computers and the associated technology can help us in storing and collecting our sources of information but we need to consider how easy it will be for others to access these in the future. 

So keeping up to date or finding ways to future-proof our sources is important however we store the information.

Family history programs can help us pull together the information we have found and display it in a format which shows our connections to our ancestors but they may not be supported indefinitely.

Whilst we may want to become paperless we must all consider how we back up what we have. 

Disasters can occur and we may lose what we have collected if we only have one copy or everything is in one place.

• Label things clearly
• Back things up
• Think about who will need access to your information

What legacy do you want to leave?
How are you going to pass your work on to the future generations?
Who gets your records? 

Can't I just leave my records to the relevant archive?

When Did You Last Visit an Archive ?

Much is made of the reduction of hours or closure of an archive and with a worldwide recession there has been great pressure on public services to reduce the cost of their services. On the back of this the paymasters will be looking at the footfall for these places.

National Archives will usually be safe as they have such large collections of interest to various researchers. However smaller regional or city/town repositories may not appeal to such a wide audience and the staffing costs will be an area where they will see reducing costs as a possibility.

So if you thought you could leave your work to the local archive you may have to think again.
Unless you have something unique which can stand the test of time such as a printed book you may find that much of the results of your hard work will become unusable or inaccessible.

Move with the technology and present your findings to the younger generations in your family. 
Consider how you store those unique items.
Make sure that somebody knows what you want to happen to your research.

Hook. Line. Sinker. Reel ‘em in!

I’ll come clean right off, I am addicted to my techy toys.  I do have an ongoing love/hate relationship with them, no matter - - I.  AM.  ADDICTED.

Traveling the way we do, living the life of a nomad for months on end, my addiction to my techy toys continues, and (hopefully) enhances our life style.  My techy tool chest contains, my lap top, my internet connection device (an air card), my digital camera(s), iPhone, iPad, scanners (flat bed and sheet scanner too), printer, I even have a projector for the computer.

Since the iPad came into my life, I use the lap top as some would use a desk top, meaning it rarely gets used out of the stick built home or the RV (Tana).  The iPad is my go to town, in the truck, rolling again, toy of choice. I use it to stay in touch, email, social media, I can surf the web.  I have a war chest of apps that are specific to our nomadic life, there are apps for everything (of course there are, as we all giggle).  Campgrounds, national parks, weather, and navigation.  I use my iPad every time we leave home or the campground.  I depend on my navigation app.  Really depend on it!

Ah, but, we are a genealogy/researching blog, so, how does this relate?

Easy, and it is called FAMILIES.  The app for iToys and Android.  There are different versions, no, they do not cross platforms, if you change from the iToy to the Android system, you will need to repurchase for your new device.  There it is, up in the right hand top corner - - Families, the app.

Families is an app developed to work with the computer data base Legacy.  Now, for transparency, there are quite a few genealogy/family history apps that will take your data from Legacy (or RootsMagic and/or other data bases you may use).  I have tried some of them.  The data base transferred and was useable in several of the apps I tried.  However, for me, and this is HUGE for me, many of the other apps did not treat multimedia well.  Many times I only had access to one image per person in my data base.  Some people in my data base have a lot more than one image.  I love to tell stories and a person’s life story by images.  Yep, I am addicted to images too.

Families allows me to have the majority of my images and multimedia files available on my iPad.  There are a few, very few, files that have not transferred, I believe these are due to the size of those files.  I have a list to review, and I will, eventually (so much to do, so little time, how wonderful is that?)

Families will allow you to input on your iPad and then transfer back to Legacy on your computer.  I don’t do that, I only do input on my computer. I made a rule for myself many years ago to do input only on one device or one computer, no matter how many devices held copies of my data base..  I’ll fess up, keeping them in sync is not my strong point.  Yes, I know about Dropbox and other great cloud capabilities.  I just personally feel safer with this rule in place and following it always.  It is what works for me.

So, how do I use Families?

Families is great for spur of the moment research, like when I am miles from home and realize I am very near the cemetery where ggggguncle John is buried and I have no photo of his headstone, or I just want to pay a visit. I can use the data base to help refresh my memory on the specifics.  I try to have maps of cemeteries attached to the data base. Oh, has this been a boon.  I don’t know why, but, so many of the rural cemeteries, I seem to lose connectivity - wink wink.  I don’t need an internet connection to show me where the cemetery is, IF I have a map attached as multimedia.

I use Families for spur of the moment library research.  Say I find myself in a small town where ancestors lived and died and I desire their obituaries, Families has the information.  I can walk into a library, pull up my family tree on the app and reference what data I do have on the family, checking and rechecking as I pull microfilm, find obituaries and make copies (sometimes I even make those copies WITH the iPad).

Yes I do research this way. Our nomadic life style has a way of providing some wonderful surprising opportunities for research. We broke down in Seaside Oregon last year.  During our unplanned extended stay there I was able to visit the local cemetery, photograph a number of headstones and go to the local library and find 6 obituaries.  Research on the fly, err, roll.

Below an obituary, Walter Stuart, I found and captured with the iPad while we were broken down in Seaside Oregon last summer.

However, the most useful purpose for Families for me is the ability to pull up the data base and the thousands of images I have attached. You want cousin bate. This. Is. It. You want a way to quietly HOOK the next generation. This. Is. It. Pull up gggrampas multimedia events and show them photos of gggrampa as a baby. Hook. Line. Sinker. This. Is. It.  My hubs, aka Man, knows I have the data bases and images on the iToys and he will lead a family discussion right back to Families and the iToys.  Many times we have been enjoying a discussion with cousins or grandchildren and we find ourselves pulling out the iToys and “showing” images.  The iPad size is perfect. Pass it around. The images look soooo good.

Hook.  The family, father and parents, mother and parents, child.  A glimpse of the multimedia, one photo of each.

Line. Looking at the individual, the facts and a image icon row.

Sinker. Open the image line row and here are SOME of the photos for Lorena.  I have more for her than will fit on the screen (what a shame, eh??)

Reel em in!  This. Is. It. Just one of the photos in Lorena's multimedia collection.  Even those with very little interest in "research" LOVE photos!  Everyone LOVES photos!

The last time I showed off Families to extended family I had the undivided attention of some young teens.  They were fascinated by the photos I showed them of their mom and grandmother.  They were equally as fascinated by the notes I could share with them, stories, if you will, of their heritage.

Yep, I set the hook, line and sinker and I reeled them in.  It was so much fun!

How do you use your techy toys and apps?  Do you reel em in?  Tell us how you do - -




* The required disclaimers:  I am a patron of both Legacy and Families.  I paid for my copies.  Neither has asked me to review their products.  I will receive nothing in return for my review.  I did recently win a copy of Legacy 8 and the downloadable PDF book file from a Legacy Webinar.  I ran a contest on Reflections and gave the free copy away, as I had already paid for my upgrade to Legacy 8.

** This post came about as an offshoot of several social media discussions I have participated in.

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