Genealogy Books - The Organized Family Historian : How to File, Manage, and Protect Your Genealogical Research and Heirlooms (National Genealogical Society Guides)

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Spotlight customer reviews:
Customer Rating:

Summary: Family History
Comment: I found it a very informative book though a lot of the content was common sense. It doesn't hurt to
be reminded of the obvious occasionally. Unfortunately, from my point of view, it was an American
reference book which does not concern me in Australia. For anyone researching in America, I'm sure
it would be very helpful.

Customer Rating:

Summary: A waste of my money!
Comment: What a DISAPPOINTMENT! This book is NOT for you unless you are a beginner geneaolgist. The book
does NOT LIVE UP TO THE HYPE ON THE COVER!!!

If I wanted a book about "how to DO
genealogical research," this book would be okay. However, this book is SUPPOSED to be about "how to
ORGANIZE, FILE, MANAGE & PROTECT YOUR GENEALOGICAL RESEARCH AND HEIRLOOMS" which is what the cover
of this book CLAIMS it does. IT DOES NOT!

For example, in the chapter about
census records, there is NOT ONE iota of information about how to "file & manage" (as promised on
the cover) the information gleaned from census records. The book only discusses what info is
supposed to have been included in each of the census years and wholly fails to give one pointer
about how to organize your census extractions -- it does not even discuss the pros and cons of
organizing census extractions by year or by ancestor or by location much less how to transfer them
to the computer.

The author includes only one small chapter about protecting
research and heirlooms and there is precious little information that is of any actual use. However,
the author goes to great lengths to discuss why the diaries of our ancestors are so valuable and
must be preserved --- but any genealogist worth her salt will know that already!

This is a book for BEGINNERS ONLY!
If you are looking for more than a beginners' book, DON'T
BUY THIS BOOK!

My money was wasted because I was MISLEAD as to the contents and because
I relied on the alleged reputation of the author! If the book's cover accurately reflected what the
author actually discusses, I would not have purchased it. The author and the National Genealogical
Society have betrayed my trust.

P.S. The National Genealogical Society and the author
hold the copyright for this book. It's a shame the NGS is a party to this kind of false
advertising! I wrote the NGS about this book. The NGS did not even acknowledge receipt of my
letter much less respond!

Customer Rating:

Summary: Ironically, not very well organized (but good info)
Comment: As every genealogist knows, as soon as you start to gather original documents and photocopies and
family photos and correspondence and research notes, it begins reproducing secretly, at night, all
by itself. Pretty soon, your two ring-binders have become a packed four-drawer file cabinet and you
haven't seen your dining room table in months. Ann Fleming, president of NGS and a family researcher
of wide experience, wants to save you from all that. The question is whether it takes an entire book
to do it. She begins with all the reasons and ways you should organize your work and your results
from the very beginning, including a discussion of file folders versus ring-binders, spiral pads
versus a laptop computer or PDA, keeping to-do lists and a research notebook to focus you on the
particular task at hand, and so on. Then she proceeds to the proper use of those basic
research-tracking forms we all learned about in our first genealogical month: Pedigree charts,
family group sheets, and research and correspondence logs. In the following chapters, she expands
the discussion to more specialized forms and record-keeping methods, including those for federal and
state census schedules, courthouse-type vital records, military records, wills and probates, land
research, city directories, church records (though I'm not sure how such a diverse body of
information can be handled on a standardized form), immigration and naturalization files, cemetery
records and surveys, and school and medical records, among others. And all those forms appear as PDF
files on the CD that accompanies the book. She recommends you write a research report to further
focus you on what you hope to accomplish during a particular project or research trip, including an
individual or family timeline, and she makes excellent suggestions generally on preparing yourself
for that trip, whether to Salt Lake City or to a nearby rural county. (Yes, you really need to do a
preliminary literature search and review what you already know.) The sections on how and why to care
for family photos (don't just discard all those you can't identify), the necessity of a disaster
plan (duplicate and back up your files in another location, one that will survive the next flood or
tornado), and why you should have plans in place for the final disposal of all your work when you're
no longer around.

However, Fleming also spends far too much time providing discursive
details (and many personal anecdotes) on the interpretation of all these records, which seems
outside the scope of a book on organizing one's research. She includes thirty pages of detailed
discussion of the questions asked on each of the decennial U.S. censuses, for example, plus several
pages on the Soundex and Miracode systems, another sixteen pages of details on American wars, and a
lengthy discussion of how to interpret the terminology found in marriage and probate records. Much
of this is, by necessity, generic. (No mention is made of the peculiarities of Louisianian legal
jargon, for instance, which is of particular interest to me and the other local researchers I know.)
She tells you about the online Civil War Soldier System, recommends techniques for oral history
interviews, reminisces about inheriting family heirloom furniture, discusses good courthouse
etiquette, and describes the differences between microfilm and microfiche, the Register numbering
system and how to conduct a cemetery survey. There's useful information on the national Interlibrary
Loan program, the IGI, PERSI, and photo-enhancement software -- but none of it really belongs in
this book.

Finally, she goes into a certain amount of detail on organizing your
information for publication, either in print or on the Web, but what she says actually applies to
organizing your genealogical data for any purpose, and much of it repeats what she has said earlier.
She even discusses style sheets for publishing and provides a chart of U.S. postal codes (the use of
which actually should be avoided in publication). The problem here is that the subject of
genealogical publishing requires another full volume in this series, not just the twenty-odd pages
at the end of this one.

In her attempt to be all things to all genealogists, Fleming
never quite presents a single coherent system for organizing one's genealogical records and
materials, either. I don't say she should have done so, necessarily. William Dollarhide and many
others have developed and promoted their own schemes, all with good and bad points, and one
understands that the series editor wants to appeal to the widest spectrum of possible readers - but
when the advice is too general, its usefulness is greatly diminished. It might also have been useful
to include tips for designing and developing one's own forms (perhaps by providing templates on the
CD) for more specialized purposes, like the UK and Canadian censuses, German parish research, and
transcribing ship lists.

To one with experience in publishing, it's pretty obvious what
has happened here: In order to keep all the volumes in this series roughly the same size (which can
be sold at the same price), considerable extraneous information had to be added to what would have
made a good fifty-page section in a different book. Perhaps this one should have been titled
*Genealogy 201: Intermediate Methods in Genealogical Research and Organization*. It's a well-written
and informative book, but it's simply not the book the title says it is.

Customer Rating:

Summary: Another 5 star NGS publication
Comment: Written by Ann Carter Fleming, CG, CGL, The Organized Family Historian is part of the guidebooks
series being published by the National Genealogical Society. Ann is the current president of NGS
and a very experienced genealogist. Her book addresses a lot of a new genealogist's concerns: how
to interview relatives, how to fill out genealogy forms, etc. If you are a new researcher, you
will benefit from all her advice on basic topics as well as the sections on organization. It is so
much better to be organized from the beginning! But for those of us how began research before the
Internet was invented (Yes! There was such a time), there are lots of good things to learn as well.
Do you have a personal business card to hand to people at libraries and conferences? This is much
better than trying to exchange addresses and phone numbers in a hurried manner. You can even print
some of your main surnames on the back so the recipient will remember why they have your card in the
first place. She also gives great ideas on creating a list of the research materials in your home
library so you know what you have and won't buy a book twice. The chapter "Objects of My Affection"
has lots of great guidelines for handing family photographs and ephemera. The book also includes a
CD of the forms and worksheets, saving us the trouble of creating them ourselves. We can use that
time for organizing!

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