Course: 2027-07
From Scattered to Sorted: Organizing Your Genealogy Research One Family Group at a Time
Virtual via Zoom
Faculty:
Coordinator and Instructor: Kelli Jo Bergheimer, MSM
Other Instructors: Katherine Crichton; Drew Smith
Tuition:
- Regular Price: $615
- NGS Member Price: $575
Description:
Are you struggling to organize your genealogical research? Perhaps it seems overwhelming. Come join us and learn a system for organizing one family group at a time. We will start with parents, children, second and third spouses, and more children. With your family group, we will look at digital and paper organization options. You can choose what works best for you. You will gather, analyze, find what’s missing, and write about your family group. Join us to find the system you are missing!
Objectives:
- Develop a plan that fits your style to organize your family group–considering digital and paper organization options.
- Gather what you have already, and use timelines and gap analysis to identify what’s missing.
- Learn strategies to find more education and plan a research trip.
- Learn successful strategies for calendaring your project.
- Write something about your family group with an eye toward preservation for your descendants.
Student Prerequisites:
None
Recordings:
Sessions will be recorded and available through July 9, 2027.
NOTE: All times are listed in Eastern Time.
Live Sessions may be subject to schedule adjustments by your course coordinator.
| Day | Session | Time | Session Title | Description | Instructor |
| M | 10:10-30 | Welcome and Orientation | Bergheimer | ||
| M | 1 | 10:30-11:45 | The Paper Worksheets or Digital Worksheets for Success | Have you struggled to track and organize information you collect in your genealogy research? Learn to use a system adaptable for digital tracking or paper tracking. Learn about how and why to organize one family group at a time. | Bergheimer |
| M | 2 | 12:00-1:15 | Organizing Facts and Notes | Learn how to use family tree and note-taking software to support tracking your family group information. | Smith |
| M | 3 | 2:15-3:30 | Develop Your Working Plan to Organize Your Family Group Information | Learn to build your system with paper or digitally or a combination. Choose to build your system to your particular goals and research objectives. View samples and hear options. | Bergheimer |
| M | 4 | 3:45-5:00 | Gather for Your Family Group and Partial Hands-on Work Session | In this partial hands-on session, continue working with your family group, continue to gather, and fill in your worksheets and trackers. | Bergheimer |
| T | 5 | 10:30-11:45 | Organizing what you have for your family group and Partial Hands-on Work Session | In this partial hands-on session, learn to organize what you have collected. Learn how to number your family group to be able to expand to include a larger number of family groups. | Bergheimer |
| T | 6 | 12:00-1:15 | Beyond the Household: Getting More from the Census | You found your ancestor in the census. Now what? In this session, we’ll look closely at the original image, transcribe the household, and make sure we haven’t missed important details. Then we’ll venture next door—and down the road—to see who else was living nearby and what those neighbors might tell us about our ancestor’s family and community. | Crichton |
| T | 7 | 2:15-3:30 | Hands-on Work Session | Hands-on session for transcribing census data and collecting data on other potential research leads in an enumeration district. | Crichton |
| T | 8 | 3:45-5:00 | Mapping a Life: The Power of Genealogical Timelines | A simple list of dates is often just the skeleton of a life. We’ll move beyond basic chronologies and explore how different types of timelines—from personal milestones to broader historical contexts—can transform your research. By mapping your ancestor’s journey visually, you’ll learn to identify hidden gaps, resolve conflicting records, and see the patterns of a lifetime that a standard pedigree chart might miss. | Crichton |
| W | 9 | 10:30-11:45 | Hands-on Work Session | Hands-on session for building a timeline for your family group members. | Crichton |
| W | 10 | 12:00-1:15 | Gap Analysis for our Family Group | Learn to apply gap analysis to your family group. Learn to use checklists for the categories of research to make sure you have fully evaluated what you have. | Bergheimer |
| W | 11 | 2:15-3:30 | Plan a Research Trip | After collecting, organizing, and building a timeline for your family group, another step is to determine where to find records. Learn to organize a research trip.. | Smith |
| W | 12 | 3:45-5:00 | Build an Expandable Locality Guide | Another helpful step in finding missing genealogical information is to build a locality guide. A locality guide is an evolving document to collect information about online and in-person archives, record collections, and resources. | Bergheimer |
| Th | 13 | 10:30-11:45 | Organizing Your Genealogy Education | After collecting, organizing, and building a timeline for your family group, one next step is to determine what’s missing and develop a plan to find it. Learn to build an education plan to fill in your potential knowledge gaps. | Smith |
| Th | 14 | 12:00-1:15 | Hands-on Work Session | Hands-on session to continue work on your family group. Areas of focus are gap analysis, plan a trip, find archives of interest, start a locality guide, and/or find more education. | Bergheimer and Smith |
| Th | 15 | 2:15-3:30 | Keep on Task: Calendaring for Success | Productive genealogy requires more than just curiosity; it requires a deliberate strategy to manage your most valuable resource: time. This session focuses on mastering pacing, time blocks, lists, and scheduling to transform a scattered hobby into a systematic journey of discovery. | Crichton |
| Th | 16 | 3:45-5:00 | Build a Personal Style Guide | Building a personal style guide can give you consistency and help build efficiency in your research. It’s a customizable reference sheet to standardize your formatting, citations, and naming conventions. | Bergheimer |
| F | 17 | 10:30-11:45 | Write About Your Family Group | What’s your plan to share your information? Learn different types of writing, the importance of writing about your own life and memories, and how to incorporate stories and biographical sketches into your system. | Bergheimer |
| F | 18 | 12:00-1:15 | Distribution, Preservation, and Next Steps | Learn about preservation and distribution for your research findings. Where can you donate? Do you want to publish? And what are your next steps for your family group? | Bergheimer and Crichton |