New Year’s Genealogy Resolutions

by footnoteMaven.com

I’ve always hated the term “resolutions” as it applies to New Year’s, mostly because the word evokes difficult things like exercise and hard work.  Instead, I try to make a list of some fun things I want to accomplish during the year, like things to do or places to go.  It may not be as useful for self-improvement, but the list itself is more satisfying to write and accomplish!  But, even with “fun” things, one has to be careful of what one wishes for…one of the things I wanted to do last year was start a genealogy blog, and now look what’s happened!

I’ve come up with a few genealogy-related goals for 2009.  I did the same for 2008, but since I didn’t have a public blog in which to broadcast those goals, they can remain undisclosed to protect my pride.  For 2009, I hope to:

• Go back one more generation on each of my great-grandparents’ lines – for a few, that means research in the 1600’s; for others, it means finding out who their parents were in the late 1800’s.  This may sound either daunting to beginners or too unfocused to experienced researchers, but I want to get back into the basics of research, and I have a hard time focusing on just one family for too long.
• Get back to the library – the Family History Library, that is.  I haven’t been there in quite some time, despite the fact that I’ve lived much closer to it for the last several years.  I will need to do this to accomplish my previous goal!
• In a combination of the above two goals, I want to find some missing details on my Bavarian ancestry.  I can go back several generations, but I am missing some vital information from a much closer time period, about 1875-1895.  This information hasn’t caused a problem with any proof of ancestry, but I want to find some death information to complete the facts for these families.
• Keep writing – both with this blog as well as magazine articles.  I won’t commit to it as a “resolution”, but it’s time to do more than “just think” about some book ideas, too.  I have some new ideas for What’s Past is Prologue for the upcoming year, but my readers will hear more about that later in the week when I celebrate a Very Special Holiday.

What are your goals to jump-start your research next year?

[Written for the 63rd Edition of the Carnival of Genealogy: New Year’s Resolutions]