Yay! Genealogy fun!

It feels like it's been forever since I posted an entry, but it's only been nine days. One thing I've noticed since moving to Illinois is that when people (mainly, Colin and my mom) ask what I did that day or how busy I've been, it's frustrating because I can never remember enough to make it seem like I really am as busy as it feels like. So I've decided to start chronicling my movements and whatnot a bit better. I doubt it'll be daily posts with hourly details (probably keep kind of a running word doc journal or something) but at least I'll know what I've done. For a former history major and family genealogist, I have terrible memory.

This week I've started really getting in the genealogy research, both trying to determine how to organize it and doing actual research. So far, there's nothing available for anyone but me and Colin to see, but with our combined skills we've found some promising possibilities.

We were looking for open source and something many people could work on without it actually being open to the public. After some initial research, I found some options and knew we wanted to work with the GEDCOM file format. It's not the easiest format to use for genealogy but it is by far the most common one and I want to ensure that it is compatible if we ever have to change things. We are also really hoping to find a way to include photos, notes, and stories - while keeping it easy and secure so that family members may be encouraged to add invaluable things themselves.

First, Colin set up a website he owns so that it would use the PhpGedView program. I spent a day wrestling with it; there's very few helpful instructions and it is not intuitive. I still am not sure if it was just me not knowing what I was doing or if the program is buggy (even after an update to the latest version of php). I did figure some things out, especially that after every time you edit a page, you have to click on edit then "accept all changes" - for ever single page that it affects, before the changes are visible. Adding media items such as photos is also not easy.

Now, instead of using an online program and website, I am creating the GEDCOM file on an open source (works on everything - Linux, Mac, and Windows) program called GRAMPS. I was shocked at how easy it was to install the program on my computer and work with it. It's a charm so far. Doesn't have nearly as many extra features that PhpGedView has, but I'd rather have just what I need to create it and for faster than many other interesting things I don't need while creating it and much slower.

However, GRAMPS and PhpGedView both are not suited for multimedia and showing notes. Sure, you can add notes but they don't show up readily until you click on "notes." To make up for this, we've also added a private wiki to the website which should be able to link to the particular part of the GEDCOM file on PhpGedView on a specific person when someone (who was access to both the wiki and PhpGedView) clicks on the link. So far, I'm planning to assemble the GEDCOM file in GRAMPS and then upload to PhpGedView. This file will not contain everything; mostly just the overall tree view and basic statistics (like birth and death).

The wiki will both augment and probably be much larger than what is in PhpGedView alone; it will have a page on every individual with an outline of statistics (including other things known such as immigration) and further details. I'm not positive just how the pages will look but for now I will try to keep it to just linking one generation backward and forward. And something that I never considered (note that my interest in genealogy stems back at least to 2001 when I started keeping pedigree charts in a binder) but is very important is to keep a research log. This will be a way to know what I have and have not looked for, what I've found and where, and what I've added and changed. Some of this can be done by looking at the changes the wiki will log, but not all of it and it will be easier for me to keep track and for others to understand.

The wiki will also be excellent to use for photos and their captions, which is currently the primary desire of the Alworth family and will be very useful when it comes to preserving and sharing photos and such.

A less technical and more fun fact: Last night I found the Denmark 1890 census entry for my grandpa's mother's family! This is very exciting, since not much is known about them prior to the immigration of her and her many siblings to the United States. I've also pieced together some things that I know weren't completely unknown by my family but needed to be sorted out, especially documents we have copies of from one of my grandpa's relatives (I honestly don't know her relationship exactly but intend to find out).

All right, I'll quit going on and on about genealogy and get back to it ...

Whatever happened to communication?

I started out reading this strip almost jumping up and down shouting "yes! yes! totally!" It's made me realize how I've been viewing the activity of blogging currently. And then forced me to push past this, since blogging is more than social networking (not many read this and that's fine with me) than a way to articulate and archive my thoughts, despite the scanty number of posts.

I think I'm going to force myself to stop there even though there's so much about life and thoughts to ramble on about. Perhaps this will give me the nudge I need to post short and sweet in some weird way.