I am taking up the challenge to update, clean-up, and move over to a new genealogy database program, and with Amy at We Tree whispering in my ear, I have decided to enter my data methodically and ONLY with sources in hand.
As Amy discovered when she started this project some time ago, this may mean that one is born, but not married until you can actually put your hands on your marriage certificate (my particular conundrum at the moment). Of course, this does not mean that I can sign up at e-harmony; yea verily, instead, I must search 34 years worth of files looking for the elusive document. It must be around here somewhere.
The up-side of this exercise is that I am truly cleaning house and putting things in order. As many of my notes and conclusions are on paper, and not recorded in any database, this project will give me an opportunity to start from scratch and be consistent.
My goals —
- provide a source (even if it is “hearsay”) for each item of information entered into the database
- properly file a photocopy of the source in my “Source Files” and file the original in an “Original Doc File”
- add a photo of each person, whenever possible
I am intentionally keeping these goals to the bare minimum, knowing my own tendency to make things more complicated than necessary and lose interest in frustration. I am also trying to determine a reasonable goal of names per month to add to the database, but this seems rather elusive. I may do better just working on a set number of hours. To be determined…
I appreciate the work involved in only entering data with sources. I have picked up another genealogist’s work and am blending it into my own research. When I fist started out I did not source (bad girl, very bad girl!) and am having a devil of a time with some of that old, incorrect data. Good Luck!
I started this task about a year ago also. It is a big task, but the satisfaction you get from having a beautifully sourced tree is worth it.