Monday, October 18, 2010

Sourcing Your Info

Spent the weekend doing a whole lot of nothing - except I did manage to get quite a bit of researching in for a friend who was trying to find out the origins of her name.  There's something satisfying about taking a few bits of information and working with it until you can piece together a story!  I'm always amazed at the creative spellings that people used to change their surnames when they immigrated to the US and even more amazed to find that often that siblings used variations of that same surname so two brothers could have completely different spellings!

I will feature the surname I researched on the next Surname Saturday.  I haven't shared all the information with my friend first and so it's best to wait.  And of course I want to make sure everything is sourced correctly.  I made the mistake early on of not sourcing a lot of info even though I knew I should. I didn't think it was a big deal and I was so excited to find all the info I had that there was no way I could possibly forget where I found it and why I entered it.  Definitely NOT a smart thing to do - especially since I tell people all the time the importance of this step!!

I have spent the last year revisiting each piece of information I have now sourcing it which is not fun. But don't laugh - how many of you have done the same thing?  If you haven't then KUDOS - if you have, go back NOW and fix it. Trust me, you will be glad you did!

Saturday, October 16, 2010

Follow Friday - 15 Oct 2010

Today I follow two blogs and although neither are genealogy related, I found I am really enjoying reading them.  The first is Bloggin' for Apples and the second, Rollins Tip Jar.  I happened to love her profile as it reads:

"I am a customer service expert. What makes me an expert? I'm a customer."

You just can't get any better than this!

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Organizing and Updating Records

Wow! It's hard to believe that it's already October and Summer is over. The days have been wet and much cooler this year which means it's time to start researching again.  I have been trying to update the Italian Surname Database but there is so much to input so it's going to take longer than I thought.  I also am trying to put the websites back in order. 
Today I contacted a few of the subscription sites that Carole had subscribed to for Gente and changed over the info to my name. It was not easy but I know the longer I wait the harder it will be.  She had bugged me for months to update our contact info but I never seemed to get around to it and now I realized why it is so important to do this.  I now find myself on the phone and looking through emails and files for hours trying to sort out all our accounts. Carole always took care of the Administration stuff as quite frankly, I suck at record keeping. 
I've decided that as I do this I will create a spreadsheet with all the info on it for future reference and include passwords and expire info. I'll then print out a hard copy in case the computer ever crashes.  I guess it just boils down to organization - AGAIN.  I have a feeling it's going to be a long winter.