February goals

Around New Year, many genealogists posted their goals for the year on their blogs. Other than deciding to keep a blog, I didn't come up with any goals for the year - I hope that the need to write posts for the blog will keep me sufficiently focused to get something done. I've noticed that some bloggers are also posting monthly goals - this strikes me as being more manageable, and I like the idea of posting the goals in public to hold myself accountable. So here are my goals for February:


New research

• Fixing sources (see later) and writing blog posts should help to identify the gaps in my genealogy. Having identified them, I need to try to fix them. I don't think there are any easy gaps left, at least on my direct lines. So the plan is to write proper research plans for the missing information. Then arrange to complete them - this will mean going to archives, not just looking on the computer. I've done this before, but it's been a while. My goal for February is to write 2 research plans.
• Following on from this, I already have a list of lookups to do at a few local archives. My goal is to get to an archive, for at least a couple of hours this month - maybe take a day or two off work and get to Durham Record Office.

Blog

• I've now written up all my grandparents, great grandparents and great great grandparents for this blog. This is where my information starts to get more sketchy. So I'm going to slow down with the posts. I'll post my research plans, to keep myself honest, and try to complete 4 more profiles of couples. Along with some meme posts, like Wordless Wednesday, that should mean around 12 posts for the month (aside from "On This Day" posts which will continue to go out daily). My goal is to post 12 times this month.
• Try to figure out how to add pages to the blog to include some Ahnentafel details, or descendant lists, as indexes to the postings. My goal is to add one page to my blog.

Eating the elephant:

There are some (re)organisation tasks I want to do, all of which will take forever. The only way to do these is the same way that you eat an elephant - one bite at a time.

• Tag all digital files with the User IDs from Legacy. Everyone in my family tree has an ID number, and I want all my digital files to include the appropriate user numbers in the filename. (The idea is that I can then use Windows Search function to easily locate everything to do with any given person, just by searching for the User ID - it works well, I just wish I'd thought of it years ago). I've done 2569 files so far, and have 8811 left to go. My goal to do around 20 a day (probably fewer if they are census files as these will have several IDs to attach)
• "Fix" sources in Legacy. Just about everything in my database is sourced, after a fashion, but I want to get the sources fixed so that they include all the information they should. As part of the process, I will be able to identify any facts for which the evidence I have is inadequate - for example, where all I have is an index entry. My goal is to fix sources for 5 people during the month.
• Scanning photographs - I inherited a box of photos from my grandmother.  Got hold of them AFTER my old scanner stopped working and it's taken me ages to get a new scanner. Now that I've run out of excuses, I want to get them scanned (and tagged). Then get hold of the photos from the other side of the family. My goal is to scan 10 pictures a week.

Indexing

I decided a couple of years ago to get involved with indexing through the Family Search website. I used the old FamilySearch a lot and benefited from the indexing done by the LDS volunteers; it seems only fair that I should do some indexing in return. My goal is to index at least 10 names a day - say 300 for the month.