Monday, June 29, 2009

Finally back to the blog

Well after an extremely long and frustrating house/apartment-hunting trip to Illinois, I am back home and ready to get to work on a bunch of new projects. First though, a little catching up with the blog.

Did anyone go back and take a look at a brick wall obstacle in their files? Come up with a new plan? I got my research plan on a problematic ancestor together while I was away and I can't wait to get started. More on that later.

Also, before I left I brought up the possibility of doing some special spotlight-type posts such as book reviews, photo days, search questions, etc. I received a few emails on the subject and there was some interest in the search question days as well as book reviews. So I'll see if I can figure out a plan for integrating those things into the page. The search question idea that was brought up to me sounds good but it would rely upon submissions from the readers, not just my own research issues. So if you've got an issue that you would like to see presented to the site, then start emailing me about it. Once I get an idea of how to get these ideas off the ground, I'll start putting them up. I have a few ideas for the first book review too so hopefully that will be something to look for in the next few weeks. This is still such a new blog so I can't wait to start giving it a bit more direction. Should be great!

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Something to think about...

Hey all, just wanted to let everyone know that I haven't forgotten about the blog. I was out of town last week and am getting ready to head out again this weekend for a couple of weeks. I'm hoping to come back with some new ideas but I wanted to leave you all with a little something to think about.

This month's assignment in my ProGen group is to return to a problem in your research and reassess your approach. Take another look at the facts, make a timeline or list of what you know and what you don't, and make up an official research plan, just as if you were preparing it for a client. So that's something that I'll be working on for the next couple of weeks and I thought it might be a good exercise for you all to work on or to think about as well. I hear professionals exclaim over and over again that with all of their client work they no longer have time to work on their own files, so this might be a good exercise for us, as transitionals, to keep from forgetting about your own work.

Good luck and I'll be back in a couple of weeks, hopefully with new thoughts and ideas to share!