FINALLY Get Organized! Jan 24th-31st 2016 Checklist Progress

I'm feeling like there is progress here. And I am looking forward to next month... which is tomorrow. Yikes!

So for the last week of January:

1. Volunteer at FamilySearch Indexing.

I have done this in the past and so I already have the software installed on my Mac. I will set aside some time, even if just an hour or two each month, to give back.

2. Learn to browse the image collections at FamilySearch.org.

Thanks for reminding us to browse instead of just search. I've been browsing in Ancestry's U. S. Evangelical Lutheran Church America Records 1875 - 1940, and it's amazing how much can be found! Especially when you are looking in a collection of church records - you need to go through the baptisms for the appropriate time span, then the marriages, the deaths, and even the membership rolls. I found some membership rolls for my ancestors' churches that give the birth, baptism, confirmation and birth location for members by family. Granted, they need to be researched further but what great clues! 


3. Create surname binders for yourself (if female) and your mother's maiden name, but leave them at that for the moment.

Done - check!

 4. Update your genealogy program to include your siblings.

Thanks for reminding us to include our present generation! I have eight siblings so this is not a quick task. But it's a fun one, and one that brings back fond personal memories. If we want to entice other members of our families to be interested in family history - there's no better way then to let them see themselves as part of it.

Reflecting back on the month of January: I really appreciate the push to find my next genealogical data base program. I had been putting it off but am now much closer to a decision. Many thanks to AmericanAncestors.org and Rhonda McClure's look at several choices in a great webinar available here. And they also deserve additional thanks for their Genealogical Software Comparison Chart 1!

Thanks, Dear Myrtle, for the January checklists!

 1 "Genealogy Software Comparisons," AmericanAncestors.org,
http://www.americanancestors.org/education/learning-resources/read/genealogical-software-programs; accessed 30 January 2016.