I have spent the last 35 to 40 years working on my family history. It is so much easier now than back then. The internet has definitely changed researching. I think about how many hours (and how much money) I spend looking for details and how it will be even easier for my grandkids to find information.
Years ago I kept my data on a word processing machine, then a program on the Commodore64. I moved the data to Rbase, a relational database. That was probably my favorite because I had so much control over the reports. I created some nifty reports to help me with my research. Finally, I moved to FamilyTreeMaker. This is not my favorite program. I do not like the reports that well, however, I do not want to move my data again. I tried moving it into another program and there are too many problems as the data doesn't slide across without a lot of errors. So, I'm leaving it in FTM and hoping someday the company puts some effort into the program and gives me, the genealogist, more options with my data.
I'm tired of my media documents being detached in FTM so I've stopped linking them. I'm currently in the process of putting all of the media documents into family folders gearing up to write a narrative on the families and placing the documents into the narrative. I've played with using Word and Scrivener. I don't think I'm going to use Scrivener as I will have to go back and mark names for an index. I'm doing that in Word, but I'm doing it as I place names into the narrative. I'm also considering an index for places mentioned including cemeteries.
As I have over 64,000 names in my database, I will continue to use FTM and use the family reports as a guide to help me with the narratives. One family has several connections. (Some have been described in previous posts.) For example, let's use 'Beth' and her great-grandparents. Each set of the four great-grandparents has at least one person related to the other three sets of great-grandparents. The ones that are related are first cousins. So one great-grandma is a first cousin to Beth's other great-grandma and they both are a first cousin to another great-grandma and the great-grandpa of the last set of great-grandparents. Did you keep that straight? Anyway, the family is full of connections such as this and I will need the genealogy program to help me keep it all straight.
I will be attending RootsTech in Salt Lake City in February. I hope to get more ideas on how to handle the data and ultimately get it into a narrative form for my family.
