One of the biggest problems surrounding internet genealogy research is keeping track of what genealogy information you have already searched, what you found there and if you need to return to certain sites regularly. Organization of genealogy research objectives and outcomes is one of the most difficult tasks in genealogy. You will find yourself wasting a ton of time if you find you are repeating searches and hitting the same genealogy websites over and over. As well, if you are writing genealogy entries either into software like Family Tree Maker or manually, you are gong to want to list sources of the information, as any good genealogist would do. So you will have to keep track of what genealogy research sites you got the information from.
You can either design your own forms for keeping track of research information, using Word, Excel or some similar type software, or you can visit several websites to get pre-designed forms. Or you can use these pre-designed forms to get inspired to create your own with improvements to theirs. We design our own.
If you don’t have Word or Excel and you would like free spreadsheet and writing software similar to Word and Excel you can download the OpenOffice.org suite for free. We use it and it is excellent. There is little reason to buy Word or Excel.
OpenOffice is at this site and it is very trustworthy and free.
http://www.openoffice.org/
Here are some of the best websites for genealogists who need family history research forms for organizing:
http://www.familysearch.org/eng/Home/Welcome/frameset_information.asp
(note for above site:click on “Research Helps” tab. Then click on the letter “R”. You can find a Research Log there)
http://genealogy.about.com/od/free_charts/Free_Genealogy_Charts_Forms_Family_Tree_Chart.htm
(note for above site:there is a nice online research chart here that you can print out if you page down and go to “AnceStories:Free Forms”)
More free form sites…
http://www.familytreemagazine.com/researchforms
http://www.free-genealogy-forms.com/General-Research-Forms/
(note for above site:this is site is good to look at the free forms and get your own ideas for making your own unique forms)
Recent Comments