How to make the most of your genealogy time!

It’s the ‘Holy Grail’, isn’t it – having more time to do our family history – and, realistically, however much time we can immerse ourselves in it, we’d always relish even more! To that end, this issue I’m so pleased to be sharing with you Dr Sophie Kay’s article on research logs – and why they are absolutely instrumental to our family history progress. In amongst the chatter and clutter of our lives, our master research log is the aid and guide that will keep us calm and collected, organised and efficient when doing our family history research. Invaluable to look back on, it will help ensure that each time you research you’re building on what you’ve done before – and not wasting time hunting for things you’ve already looked for and second guessing yourself (we have too many genealogy dreams and goals that need accomplishing to be doing that, don’t we!). Your log is (or ‘logs are’ – as you may well wish to have more than one) the place in which you can record what you have done, and what you plan to do next. Take a look at Sophie’s examples (see page 10), and find a research log style that works for you – as that’s the key. We each need to find a way of working that suits us so that we can not waste a moment of our family history research time. And talking of time, now is the time to say, sadly, goodbye to Rachel Bellerby, Deputy Editor of Family Tree who has been such an excellent friend and colleague over the past years. We wish Rachel all the best with her new plans. Back to happy things, we have a lot to look forward to this spring with brand new events from Family Tree – from DNA Discoveries, to Michelle Leonard’s DNA Masterclasses, and Sophie Kay’s new online research skills course – be sure to keep an eye out at www.family-tree.co.uk/how-to-guides/webinars Have fun!