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Take Control of Your Books with Zotero

Introduction: The Problem We All Face

If you’re a genealogist or historian, I imagine your environment might be something like this—bookshelves overflowing, stacks of books on every surface, forgotten magazines tucked into cabinets, and even digital books lost in the depths of Kindle or Google Books. You love your books and other knowledge assets, but they’re taking over. Dust is piling up, your space is shrinking, and worst of all—you’re rebuying books you already own because you’ve lost track of what’s in your collection. But there is a solution.

You don’t have to choose between loving your books and having a productive environment for new knowledge. I’m not telling you to get rid of those precious assets—just to get smarter about keeping track of them. That’s where Zotero comes in.

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Taming the AI Beast: Avoiding ChatGPT Hallucinations in Genohistory

Genealogists and historians are diving headfirst into the exciting world of AI-assisted research, where tools like ChatGPT offer a wealth of possibilities for uncovering family and community stories. But how do you ensure you’re uncovering truths, not imaginative fabrications? AI hallucinations—those moments when ChatGPT confidently gives you false information—can mislead your research if you’re not vigilant. Here’s how to navigate AI’s challenges and harness its power for genohistory.

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New Year, New Tools: Harnessing Zotero for Family History Research

Make 2025 the year you take your family history research to the next level. Discover how Zotero, the ultimate knowledge management tool for research, can help genealogists and historians merge family history and historical context into compelling genohistory. This New Year’s plan could transform your approach to research, storytelling, and legacy-building.

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Image of an ancient book with a magnifying glass lying on top of the open pages.

Unveiling the Past: A Genohistorical Journey into AI Handwriting Transcription

Everything changed this week. I’m not exaggerating. Finally, I gave artificial intelligence (AI) a serious look, and it is already transforming my genohistorical research, my business, and my life.

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A traveler on a dirt path finds the way blocked by a boulder pile.

Boulder Demolition for Genohistorians: Uncovering Ancestral Trails

If you have been doing ancestral research for some time, and taking it seriously, you know the glorious victory of tumbling a brick wall or two. You broke through to a piece of historical or genealogical knowledge that had eluded you. But some of us will eventually find our research path impeded by something bigger and much harder than a brick wall. What do you do when your path is blocked by a landslide of granite boulders ten times your height? The information you need is not just elusive. It’s gone.

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‘Twas the Night Before Christmas: Unfolding Ancestral Traditions

Happy holidays to you all! As I planned for this post, I intended something quick and simple about our ancestors’ holiday traditions. I thought it would be fun to pick a Christmas, any mid-nineteenth-century Christmas in my region of interest, and discuss how the local newspaper treated the holiday. I was in for a surprise.

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Semantics: What Did They Mean by That?

Friday was my birthday. Yes, 9/11. In the years after the World Trade Center disaster, people tended to express sympathy to me on my birthday, saying things like, “ I hope you can enjoy it, in spite of everything.” This past Friday, though, I heard nothing at all about 9/11 in my birthday messages.  

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Your Guide and Defense: Genohistory with Research Plans

I spent eight years in doctoral study in history without knowing how to create a research plan. Oh, I planned, and I researched, but it was a nebulous process, without structure. When I went back to genealogy after the Ph.D. and discovered the wonderful tool called a “research plan” that genealogists were using to do really smart research, I wondered how much better my doctoral work might have been with that one tool.

I have written about this epiphany in my earlier blog, The Golden Egg Genealogist. I won’t reinvent the wheel here. I include below a repeat of the earlier post. It was designed for genealogists and answers a lineage question, as you will see, but I ask us all to read it today from the perspective of a genohistorian. Think about how you might apply this tool to the questions of time and place that serve our broader function at the middle ground between genealogy and history.

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