Revolting Records...

...reminds me of a Roald Dahl book Revolting Rhymes.

As you know I often dive into a new adventure and then realise that I somehow need to keep track of what I am doing. I need to create some more records and, as organisation isn't my strong point, I call them revolting records.

I have now put together my fourth list of GAGs - GeniAus Gems. I have a system in Evernote where I save posts for consideration for the next week's compilation but I haven't kept a record (except for my GAGs posts) of the bloggers and blogs I have actually included in one of my lists.

I need to do this because I can't remember in my head which are the blogs and bloggers I have nominated and because this evening it struck me that such a list would be an additional evaluation tool for when (and if I am invited) I help Inside History Magazine select their Top 50 Blogs you need to read in 2015.

Just like the girl in Robin Klein's the Listmaker I am going to make a list but should it also be in Evernote or should it be on a spreadsheet in Google Drive? I like these tools because I can acccess them across devices but I just can't seem to make my mind up

Spreadsheets

In recent weeks there has been a lot of discussion around spreadsheets with DearMyrtle hosting a couple of Hangouts on the subject and other bloggers writing posts.

I am a bit of a spreadsheetaholic and use either Excel or a Google Sheets every day to organise my personal life and for some genealogy applications. I was however surprised when I saw some people using spreadsheets for things that my genealogy program does.

One of the main views on Family Historian, the genealogy software database I use,  looks just like a spreadsheet with data displayed in colums each one of which one can sort. One is able to add or remove columns from this display to suit one's needs, any field in the database can be added as a column.

At present these are the colums I have in my display:
Name, Record ID, Sex, Living, Dates, Birth Place, Death Date, Burial Place, Relationship to Root (me), Updated.

If I want to see who is buried in a particular cemetery prior to a geneajourney I just sort by that column by clicking on the column header. To see those entries I haven't updated for a while I can sort on the Updated column. Sorting by the Relationship to Root Column allows me to cluster all my closest relatives together.

 I often add or delete columns when I am after particular information. If I wanted to find all the School teachers or Plumbers in my list I could add an occupation column and osrt on that, If I wanted to find all the Methodists I could add the Religion column and sort by that.

This display is also very useful for identifying where gaps appear in one's data, white spaces (and I have lots of them) indicate that work needs to be done.

So because of this feature in Family Historian I don't need to use external spreadsheets as much as I would if I was using another software package.

Need to share files easily?

Richard Byrne on Free Technology for Teachers reminds us today that Google Drive is a perfect vehicle for sharing files. He is addressing the education community but his suggestion is just as pertinent for genealogists.

He says "You can upload videos, audio files, PDFs, Word documents, and just about any other file to your Google Drive account and you can make access to the file public if you want to. This is how I occasionally share some of my large PDFs. Grab the link to the file by clicking the share button in your Google Drive account then select "anyone with the link" as your accessibility setting. Now you can paste that link into your Facebook page for your class or your school." 

I use Google Drive all the time to share documents with family and find it very effective. I also used it in 2012 to plan a Rootstech presentation with genealogists in three other countries.

To access Google Drive you need a Google Account. Do consider setting one up - it gives yo access to a suite of wonderful tools.

Google Docs and Evernote

Two of my favourite tools are Google Docs/Drive and Evernote. Just yesterday I was reflecting on my use of these products and thinking on my personal practices.. As they can be used for similar purposes I need to have a personal policy for their use or I won't know where I have put my stuff.

Firstly I thought about some sort of tool that would sync my Evernote and Google Docs stuff and I found a few. But that's not what I want; I don't need to duplicate everything I have stored in one or the other; I need to work out what to do with each of them. I considered asking people on Twitter and Google+ how they differentiated their use of these tools or if they were just loyal to one.  Then I got distracted (I'm not just tangential in genealogy) and put my pondering aside for another day.


Lo and behold, what should appear in my RSS feeds this morning but this post from educator, David Andrade, "Google Docs and Evernote – when and why I use each one". David said "I see them as two completely different tools and when used together prove a powerful combination of resources for students and teachers alike." I would add and "little old ladies who dabble in the digital world."

I looked at the way David uses the tools and compared my practice. Because of our situations my use differs from his but his post gave me a good yardstick against which to compare my practice. The major difference is that  I will take notes from presentations in Google+. I find it easy to do this then, at a later time, edit them for future reference,  publishing on the web, in print or as the basis for a blog post. 

Evernote is my way of organizing captured images and text clipped from the web, random thoughts, short notes and URLs. I share two of my notebooks, Genealogy and Technology publicly while I keep others private. I even have a couple of audio files saved. I no longer use Delicious to look after my bookmarks; Evernote does this and much more.  My private notebooks store recipes, health notes, humour, travel info, my travel bucket list and all sorts of other stuff. The powerful Evernote tagging facility means that I can easily retrieve things that I have tagged (especially useful when my memory fails me).

Like David I use Google Docs on Google Drive for writing documents and spreadsheets. I have dabbled with presentations but may use this more when I travel with my netbook that does not have Powerpoint installed on it. The ability to easily collaborate through document sharing on Google makes it a winner for me. On a personal level I have used Google spreadsheets to organise parties, travel and weddings with family members. For geenealogy purposes I have collaborated with genealogists in three other countries to prepare a Rootstech presentation. I am presently using a Google spreadsheet to maintain with the Social Media Committee a planning document for our Society blog.  I also use Google’s Gmail and calendar for organising my life. When at a conference or event I use the Google drive Android app to take notes.

That I am able to have both Evernote and Google Drive/Docs on my four devices: laptop, netbook, Android tablet and Android 'phone makes my life so much easier. And now that I have thought about how I will use each of them I should become more efficient - Hope springs eternal!

Does your practice differ from mine? I am open to ideas.