Getting ready for the Blogging from A to Z April Challenge

During April 2020 the month of this #AtoZChallenge I will be sharing short posts on some of the 2,000+ descendants I have identified of my 3x Great-Grandmother, Elizabeth Phipps. 

Elizabeth Phipps 1785-1869 was a convict who was transported from England to New South Wales in 1814 per Wanstead. 

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Having participated in the challenge previously I realise that it can be a very difficult challenge that requires quite a deal of preparation.  I am devoting the next ten days to to preparation. So what am I doing?

1. I created a template for my posts so that will all have a consistent loo and feel. From this template I have created in Blogger twenty-six draft posts - one for each day of the challenge.

Some of my draft posts

2. I have created a spreadsheet on Google drive that has a line for each of my 26 posts. So far the columns I have are: Day,Date,Letter,Topic/Title,Descendant,Status,URL,Notes, Themes.

My nearly empty spreadsheet needs to be populated!

As I find an interesting ancestor or happy/sad/funny event in in ancestor's life I am adding it to my spreadsheet as a possible post.  

3.  It is many years since I researched this branch so I have forgotten the names of these cousinsso I have made a list of  Elizabeth's descendants from my software program as a memory jogger.

4. As many new records, especially on Trove and in the State BDM Indexes, have become available since I researched this branch I am updating their records in my database.

5. Concurrently with this I am adding any ancestor related article I find in Trove to my Trove List "Descendants of Elizabeth Phipps". 

6. I am trying to get at least one post written and scheduled each day until April 1 so that I have a buffer for days when challenges might arise!

7. I need to update my online family tree prior to the first post so that it reflects my recent research.

Wish me Luck!

Trove Tuesday - I love Trove

This morning @TroveAustralia tweeted:

After reading that Tweet I realised that I hadn't been loving Trove on #TroveTuesday much lately. Sure I had been searching for articles and correcting the text in some of them. I also included some slides about Trove tags and lists in an upcoming presentation about "Cousin Bait". 

In my talk I will be showing people how to use tags as cousin bait and how to search for ancestor tags. I always try to tag posts about my ancestors. My search for my grandfather "Frank Duncan"brings back 65 results most of which are tags I attached to articles about Frank. 

I love lists on Trove. I use the CurryAus list to keep track of articles I find for my CurryAus surname study. I can add and edit notes to the items in the list. This is useful when I have added the details from an article to my database, I can keep track of articles I have not yet worked on. 

List result from a  simple Trove search for CurryAus

The results for lists show up on the main Trove results page, note that my blog is included under the Archived website category. 

Result for simple Trove search for CurryAus

One can also just search the lists. When I search Lists for Curry I found more than mine. Some of these lists directed me to articles I could add to my list.

Results for a Curry search in Trove Lists