Screen capture of the Guidance information – research log – copyright Julie Goucher, 2014

Keeping track of our research, successes, next steps and research ideas is really important. Without it, and I speak for myself here, when I say, if it is not written down then all bets are off if I will remember or not.

I maintain a research log. Over the years this has existed in various forms, but all forms record the same information. There is a spreadsheet research log available to download HERE. There are three sheets in the Excel workbook:

• Guidance sheet – all of my spreadsheets have this feature, as it tells me the purpose of the file and other information
  

  Screen capture of the Guidance information – research log – copyright Julie Goucher, 2014

• Research log
• To do list

Those of us who have been researching a while, often know the next step, where we might be able to prove or disprove A, B, or C;  if you play chess, that moment when you can see the potential next moves depending on your opponent.

I never add discovered material directly into my family history software, or into my database for any specific studies or online offering until I verify the facts.  Everything is written down in my notebook, I know what the date was, as I date each page. I make a firm note of what I looked at, what database, what provider, that is in addition to my written notes of the actual information. Subsequently, I write my next steps and firm up those steps when I next focus on that particular individual. I also make sure that I incorporate the reference number the software gives to each individual person. 

A research log also records negative searches – as that too helps over time, as it provides:

• A link to the search on a specific date, thereby it is easy to check if there has been an update since you did the actual search
• What did you hope to find in the search? What did you find?
  • Did you get no results?
  • Did you get a result, but discounted it? if so why did you discount it?
    • Did you discount the result, but nonetheless, want to contemplate further, or undertake some further contextual research.       
• Did you perhaps not understand immediately the results, or the results were inconclusive and therefore required further research
• Did you decide you wanted to re-evaluate all the research undertaken to date, and create a timeline, what happened when and where the gaps were. Researching the gaps more comprehensively? 

Each year or so I re-evaluate if my process for recording research by considering if it is thorough enough – let me clarify this – is the way I record search results sufficient? Sometimes you can only tell this, by actually doing the process, then see where there are holes in the process, or perhaps a change is needed because there is additional material further down in the process that needs to be considered and/or incorporated.

Earlier this year I began sorting through a huge collection of images, these were screen captures, book covers, images of documents etc etc, not all genealogical. As part of that I began to consider the wider focus and that led to a larger project that is not going to be completed anytime soon. Essentially, a change was going to be needed and I have spent a couple of months checking that my provisional change is robust enough and won’t need changing in the future. I will come back to this in 2026 and share the details in a future post.

In closing, as I finish each notebook I go back through the pages, checking the “To Do’s” – I always tick if complete and each entry is accompanied with the date. If I am part the way through, I make a note in a different colour pen (if at home, pencil if in an archive) of where I got to, then add this symbol >> to the page, thus indicating the item has moved to the next To Do list, it is worth mentioning that I do this whether this is to the next page or later page in the same book or a new book; and of course there is a larger entry in the dated research log itself.