Hello everyone,

Sorry for the break in blog posts. I was visiting family for a couple of weeks and am finally getting back into my usual routine and will be back to my 12 week project tomorrow.

While I’m still in holiday mood, I have been having a look through the many genealogy books I have picked up in family research centres and in second hand book stores. I have picked up quite a few of them for a few pounds as well as a number at original retail prices. Most were only published in the last 20 years, but are already out of date with internet URLs, many of the pages no longer existing.

It is definitely worth browsing in second hand and charity shops for genealogy or social history books. There are plenty of gems to be found! I found one looking at Elizabethan handwriting, one on family surnames, one on useful internet websites and another on general research all in one visit (someone must have been clearing out their collection).

What am I doing with these books? Well I have started searching through the various URLs to see which websites are still online and putting them into my own personalised spreadsheet on Google Sheets. While I am aware there are some excellent places to find resources online such as the FamilySearch Wiki (very much like Wikipedia but for family history research) and Cyndi’s List, I find myself overwhelmed by the information. Having my own spreadsheet allows me to organise the pages in a way that seems logical to me and also so I can add in pages that are more wide ranging such as local history pages or occupation related pages.

This isn’t a quick project and it is not one that will be publicly available. This is my own attempt at keeping organised. It’s definitely not one of my strengths and comes along with being dyslexic and dyspraxic. Originally, all of the useful websites I had come across through my own searching for answers as well as through online conferences or tutorials were added to my bookmarks on Google Chrome, but I suddenly thought, “what would happen if my laptop threw a wobbly and I no longer have access to these websites?” The other bonus is that I can keep adding to it as I find new websites of interest.

For me, Google Sheets seems the most logical way to keep track of all these useful websites I stumble across. Excel would have been another option, but having Google Sheets online makes it easier for me rather than opening up Excel every time I want to browse for something or add a new URL link.

How do you organise the handy websites you find? Do you bookmark them or put them in a spreadsheet? There is of course no right or wrong way of doing this. As long as it works for you!