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Golden Egg Genealogist

Zotero for genealogy: getting your ducks in a row

Leave a Comment / Go-anywhere, paper-free solutions, Golden Egg Genealogist, Organizing for optimal efficiency, Zotero / By / 8 minutes of reading

Genealogy requires us to capture and organize mounds of information. We can do it the hard way, or we can use Zotero. This robust, free tool simplifies the capture, organization, and use of citations and research notes. You can cite sources with a single click. Attach images, documents, spreadsheets, and PDFs. Sync to free cloud storage and get your notes anywhere there’s Internet access! It got me through graduate school, and now it’s revolutionizing my genealogy. It’s a GEG’s best friend. In Part 1 of my Zotero series, I tell you why you should bother. Don’t miss out! …

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Getting help from genealogy software: rating the “Big Three”

Leave a Comment / Go-anywhere, paper-free solutions, Golden Egg Genealogist / By / 12 minutes of reading

Genealogy’s “Big Three” — Family Tree Maker®, Legacy Family Tree®, and RootsMagic™ — offer many  tools for our research. How well, though, does each guide you in figuring out how to use the product? Do they help you get started? Describe the screens and fields you see? Guide you to deeper uses of the software? Do they help  you? In this next installment of the Desktop Dilemma Series, we continue our analysis of the Big Three side by side, looking at genealogical software online help.

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Enter at the side door: the Ancestry Card Catalog

8 Comments / Digging for genealogical gold, Go-anywhere, paper-free solutions, Golden Egg Genealogist / By / 3 minutes of reading

Like many, my early days using Ancestry.com were all about chasing fluttering green leaves. I found sources because my ancestor’s name matched the index of a record collection. I wish I’d known much earlier the wealth of information available in the Ancestry Card Catalog, entered through the side door. It holds sources that are indexed — but not indexed. Bear with me, and I’ll explain. (Newest entry in the Wish I’d Known Series.)

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What’s OCR? Turning a picture of text into text

Leave a Comment / Go-anywhere, paper-free solutions, Golden Egg Genealogist / By / 5 minutes of reading

You’re embarrassed to question it. People throw out the term “OCR” as though it’s common knowledge. You don’t want anyone to know you missed the memo. Well, a lot of people missed the memo. Genealogy draws heavily on this technology, so let’s take up the question: “What’s OCR?”

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Photo context: treasures in the details

Leave a Comment / Digging for genealogical gold, Every little thing in context, Golden Egg Genealogist / By / 6 minutes of reading

In a photo of my great-grandparents, I happened to notice on the dresser behind them what looked like a tobacco container. Was I seeing a throwback to childhood pranks? Prince Albert in a can? I scanned the photo at high resolution and zoomed in. It was Prince Albert. I began to wonder what else I might see in the photo context. In one detail after another, my ancestors’ world came into focus. 

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Narrowing birth dates — a free tool does the math for you

13 Comments / Digging for genealogical gold, Every little thing in context, Go-anywhere, paper-free solutions, Golden Egg Genealogist / By / 5 minutes of reading

A census record offers you a moment in time when your ancestor was, say, five years old. That gives you a potential birth date range of 365 days, plus a possible Leap Day. If you use multiple records, however, you can use the overlaps to whittle down that range, getting closer to the real date. Doing this math in your head, unfortunately, can launch a headache. But I have a solution: the Date Narrowing Calculator. My gift to you.

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Genetic genealogy: why more DNA is better

5 Comments / Digging for genealogical gold, Every little thing in context, Golden Egg Genealogist / By / 4 minutes of reading

Genetically speaking, my sisters and I are all half Mom and half Dad, right? DNA 101. So, only one of us needs to do a DNA test, and then we’ll all know our ethnic origins, correct? . . . OK, I confess I never took DNA 101. But thanks to AncestryDNA, I have learned the answer is no (at least when it comes to autosomal DNA). The more family members you test, the fuller the picture of your genetic genealogy will become.

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Transcribing historical manuscripts in PDF software

7 Comments / Go-anywhere, paper-free solutions, Golden Egg Genealogist, Organizing for optimal efficiency / By / 4 minutes of reading

Make transcribing historical manuscripts easier and more valuable using a desktop tool you already have. PDF software can let you zoom in on the manuscript, while transcribing the text as comments. You have not only transcribed; you have made the document searchable without separating it from the scanned image.

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Citing sources: the Desktop Dilemma series

5 Comments / Digging for genealogical gold, Go-anywhere, paper-free solutions, Golden Egg Genealogist, Organizing for optimal efficiency / By / 7 minutes of reading

This newest installment of the Desktop Dilemma series takes up the question of how the Big Three genealogy desktop software packages handle citing sources. How easy do they make it to leave an effective bread-crumb trail back to where you found your facts?

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The Genealogical Society: Revise or Demise?

17 Comments / Golden Egg Genealogist, Leaving it better than we found it / By / 6 minutes of reading

Genealogy is emerging, growing, thriving. So why do we hear rumors of the impending death of the local genealogical society? Is it “revise or demise” for these once-vital pillars of family history research? And what is the GEG’s obligation to local organizations? …

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