Saturday, June 18, 2011

My Experience With the Family History Quick Start Mini-Course (Series)

Today, I registered for a free mini-course that was offered by Family History Quick Start. I want to share a little about this course and my experience with the course itself. This post will be the beginning of a series of posts in relation to the course offerings. This site helps you by giving you tips and step by step guidance that will aid in your research. Organizing all the data you have found on your family is a great start; something that sometimes I lack in doing properly. I only say this because there is so much information that I have in my possession already, that having to re-organize the paperwork can be a somewhat painful process. I have absolutely no problem organizing my digital files, thanks to my Graphic Design background.


 Being able to locate the correct documents and images is very important. I am hoping to gain oodles of knowledge from this course to help me organize the findings I have so far, into something that will be easy to read. Not like some of the family tree websites I have visited, which only seem to confuse the viewer even more. The hierarchy of the set up on some of these web pages is a little hard on your eyes. If it's not a busy, color clash of graphics and font usage then it's how the tree is displayed and sometimes that just takes away from what you are trying to understand as far as the hierarchy of the family tree itself is concerned.

I've been to a lot of different sites on genealogy and family history and the only one I have found so far that breaks things down for you into manageable bites, is the Family History Quick Start web page. The first course in the series is all about getting organized; organizing your computers file folders, tips on creating digital files from paper records, how to's on saving, naming and backing up these files for easy access later on, and last but not least, is the correct way to cite your sources! When writing, whether it's a blog like this one or a term paper for a college class, you have to give credit where it's due. The people that write the many different articles have already completed their research, so don't steal it and try to pass it off as your own work. It's very easy to cite a source and only takes a few seconds! Don't believe me? Then you haven't seen this website yet! Here's the link for you to try it out yourself.
Citations Quick and Easy


Tomorrow I will be completing Day 1 of the mini course, I will then post my experiences and thoughts on the subject matter. Until then..good luck in your own search!

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