Looking back & looking forward

January is the traditional time for reviewing the past year and making plans for the current year. So, I thought I would put together some of what I have done (family history wise) and what I hope to do in 2024 for this blog.

I retired from paid work and merged into being a FHWA volunteer – what a good choice! Like-minded people – who quickly become friends – and learning a lot about researching in Perth and other Australian States (because my research has been for my own family – the UK, Ireland, Scotland, and New Zealand). I love my FHWA library days, and the chance to support others in their research.

Collecting stories for my family history book. I decided to use an interesting story to highlight a family, generation, or place. Now I have 10 stories as a focus on the relationships, scandals, social background, and immigration of relatives. It only remains for me to write them up – a 2024 project. One thing I really enjoyed was exploring the burning of my 7 x Grandfathers’ sugar refinery in Goodman’s Fields, Aldgate, London. Could not have done it without the wonderful London Lives https://www.londonlives.org/ site, plus The Internet Archive https://archive.org/ for research and illustrations.

Key to a lot of organisation of my resources (family historians will agree that ‘organisation’ is like spinning straw into gold – never-ending and tedious, but it does pay off). I had been using the full application of Adobe for PDF’s – a bonus from my previous workplace. It disappeared when I left – so what to do? I found a free program, no advertising, sitting quietly on your own computer, and with updates – PDF24 https://www.pdf24.org/en/  It will turn various documents – JPG’s, PDF’s Word etc. into other formats; merge PDF’s into one, you can edit, and there are many other features. This is great when you have photographed pages, or scanned documents, and need to reduce, clip or tinker with them in some way: highly recommended. I also downloaded Auslogics Duplicate Finder – free and a safe app. https://www.auslogics.com/en/software/duplicate-file-finder/  which I have used before, on a previous computer. Very useful for cleaning up your resource files, but some care is needed that the file which is in the ‘right’ place is not removed.

Last year I also took the plunge into X (once twitter) – and now I follow libraries, professional genealogists and their organisations, historians, mediaeval enthusiasts, cemeteries, photographic archives and other family historians. A big bonus of X is that it is so immediate – as soon as news breaks, it’s up there. The buzz at the moment is Banyan DNA https://thednageek.com/introducing-banyandna/   Apparently, BanyanDNA can do two things WATO (What Are The Odds) can’t: it can handle double relationships, and it can analyse the fit of the DNA matches across the entire tree (not just between the target and matches) and it’s an online app that works through your internet browser. Another site I found and have subscribed to is https://www.gethistories.com/archive  ‘Histories’ – intriguing and eclectic.

What’s happening in 2024? I have bought 10 gold frames over the last few years from Op Shops and must put some of my old family photos in them. My father’s photo album of his early photography in Dunedin, engagement, and early marriage photos needs restoring…. Those stories for the book….3 cases of slides to convert….

Wish me luck!