Some New Year's Resolutions for Genealogists

As each new year begins, do you get excited about starting over? Do you promise yourself you will exercise more? Eat more healthy foods? Cut back on bad habits or continue good ones? Perhaps you have made some new year’s resolutions for those things, but have you thought about making some for your genealogy research? There are many things that all of us can do in this new year and those to come to enhance our research skills. Why not make a resolution for 2024 to become a better researcher? Here are a few suggestions for how you can do just that.

First and foremost, promise to educate yourself!

• Attend meetings, classes, and conferences, either in person or virtually, to broaden your knowledge about doing research and sharpen your skills. 
• Learn about the places in which your ancestors lived, the laws in effect when they lived there, and the geography of the regions.
• Discover what record sets are available for the time period(s) you are researching. 
• Are you still looking for birth or death certificates that just don’t exist? 
• Or registers that burned in courthouse fires? 
• Or passenger manifests that, even if you find them, will just have names and ages on them and no clues to separate your person from hundreds with similar names?
• Teach yourself some basic vocabulary in the language your immigrant ancestors used so you can identify them in early records. 
• If it’s relevant, learn enough of their original alphabet and handwriting styles of the times as well as their names before migration so you can pick your people out of foreign records when you are ready.
• Promise yourself that you will NOT just pull things off the internet without thoroughly checking for accuracy, both from others and yourself.
• Become reasonably proficient at sourcing all your facts. 
• Consider reviewing your previous work and writing a source citation for every detail that needs to be proven. 
• Yes, that’s a lot of work, but it will be so worth it when you do it right!
• Resolve to become a bit better at technology if you are still struggling with it. 
• Lots of classes, many for free, are available to help you learn more and become confident of your skills.
• Invest in solid backup and safety features for all your important digital files. 
• If you aren’t currently practicing the 3-2-1 backup strategy, this is the perfect time to begin. 
• Simply put, you should have three copies of anything important on two different media with one copy off-site. 
• So, particularly for your genealogy files and those precious family photos, one copy of everything on your primary computer, two copies on external drives, and one copy in the cloud. 
• Not doing that yet? Why not start there right now!

Still need ideas?

Check out the StLGS website!

• Coming up on Saturday afternoons, 27 January and 3 February 2024 are "Foundations of Genealogy," Parts 1 and 2, just perfect for rejuvenating your skills. You can sign up now to attend either in person or via Zoom.
• And while you are on the site, if you are a member of StLGS, you can watch a wide variety of classes that are already recorded.
• Not a member? We'd love for you to join!
• Monthly meetings are always free and open to everyone, and most are recorded. You can see what is new on the Monthly Meeting Page.
• Interested in German, Irish, or Jewish research? Attend a Special Interest Group (SIG) meeting or watch a recording.  Just click on any of the gold buttons in the middle of the home page.

Hope you now have some good ideas of how to make and keep at least one new year’s resolution. Happy 2024!