2:35 PM

How to Take Genealogy Notes - It's easier than you think!

This is the follow-up to the post "Why to Take Genealogy Notes." If you're wondering why you'd bother, start with that post.

image of hands typing and text how to take genealogy notes

I've had people tell me, "I know I should take notes but what do I put in the notes?" That's what this post is about. This post is NOT about the technical aspects of creating a note-taking form or even how to organize your notes. All you need to take great genealogy research notes is a blank page to take the notes on and the knowledge of what to record. A form or template is a good way to get a reminder of what to include, but it isn't a must.

Modern Genealogy vs. Paper Genealogy

There are SOOOOOO many options for how to physically take notes today. Before electronic options, you were going to use paper. The only question was whether you were going to use blank paper or a form.

Because there was no automation in the paper process, you didn't need to be told how to take notes. You had to record any information you'd want to use in future. This doesn't mean the notes were necessarily good, but you had to take notes from the start.

Genealogy Notes are More Than a Tool

Here's what I think is really important about this change from paper to electronic---and what you need to be aware of so you can do something about it. Because you HAD to take notes in the paper process, as your skills progressed, you'd naturally add more to your notes. Today, most genealogists don't learn basic note-taking. They can research for years without realizing notes are missing from their process. It isn't obvious notes are a missing piece.

So notes are a tool that help you do better genealogy. But they're more than that. Taking notes improves your skills, too.

Taking notes improves your skills.

You don't need to duplicate effort and put in your notes what you can automatically capture. This doesn't mean you don't need to take notes. It means you need to take notes like a more experienced genealogist. If you're reading this, you are ready to be that more experienced genealogist.

Genealogy Note-taking 101

First, you need to take notes while you research. Genealogists need to take "research notes." Not just random notes (you can take random notes, too, but you need research notes).

Taking notes after you finish researching is "reporting." It won't result in capturing the same information. Also, you need to report. If you try and recreate research notes after research stops, you need more time to then create a report.

Since this is The Occasional Genealogist, I assume you're busy and don't have all the time you want for genealogy. That large chunk of time needed after researching probably isn't reasonable. That means you've cheated your research notes and you're cheating your reports, or skipping one or the other. It doesn't work, so don't do it.

Both research notes and reporting are important in genealogy. You should do both. You want to do both in a way that best uses your time without cheating the purpose for either. Skipping the research notes has a snowball affect. It isn't a hack to save time, it's a cheat that will bite you after a while. You're probably already feeling the negative impact if you've researched for a while without taking notes. You just don't realize it because you've never had the experience of having good notes to use as your research continues.

That's why I start with why you need notes. If you don't see any value in them, you won't take them, even if you know how.

Understanding the difference between note-taking while you research and writing up information after you finish should help you understand part of "how" to take notes.

Note-taking and reporting are two different phases in the genealogy research process. We often describe this as a cycle but many of the phases are repeated before we finish the full process so a "cycle" isn't exactly accurate. This is actually important to understanding note-taking's purpose.

Note-taking, Analysis, and the Genealogy Research Process

Here are the basic phases of the genealogy process:

Review what you know.
Plan new research.
Research.
Report.
Repeat.

You will take notes when you review and when you research. You might take notes when you plan. Reporting or summarizing is a different phase. If you want, you can say you take review notes, research notes, planning notes, and reporting notes. That would be accurate. You need to write the same kinds of things at each of these phases.

Some information doesn't have to be re-recorded during a phase if you captured in an earlier phase. Essentially, research notes are the notes that get all the initial information. When we used paper, research was the phase where you could record details you wouldn't have access to any other time. Digital notes let us make a copy so we can easily include earlier information, plus online information might give you some information prior to starting research (think of source details for a citation in particular).

Digital and online options haven't made research notes obsolete, they've just made it possible to record some information into another kind of note. There is still information that you'll only come across while researching. That paper-era genealogist probably captured that information without needing instruction. You might be missing it because you skipped notes and just attached information to your online tree.

A Different Phase of the Research Cycle That Matters

There's another phase that can be added to the research process but it is one of the phases that really can be repeated anywhere in the process, so I don't list it in this basic process (this basic process is what can be represented as a cycle).

The additional phase is "Analyze and correlate." (Correlation is actually a specific type of analysis where you compare similar information. You will often see the phrase "correlation and analysis" so I've mentioned that phrase here but I'm just going to call it "analysis" going forward.)

You can analyze information in any of the phases. You MUST analyze before you report/summarize. Genealogical analysis does not have to be complicated. It's basically a one-word description of a bunch of potential tasks or skills that take raw data and turn that data into usable information.

In the post about why to take notes, the compelling reason to take notes was to capture clues. Analysis is how you take information and either recognize it as a useful clue or how you take several clues and combine them to either find more meaning (basically combine them into a better clue) or combine them to create an answer.

What goes in your notes is the raw data (information) that needs to be analyzed. What goes in your report/summary is the processed information.

What goes in your notes is the raw data (information) that needs to be analyzed. What goes in your report/summary is the processed information.

Part of the reason you need research notes, not post-research notes, is you need to capture small details you probably won't remember later. These little details make a difference when you analyze what you have. This analysis could happen years after a research session. Good research notes should contain information your inexperienced self thought was useless. Saving a copy of a source is one way to capture some of this information before you know its important. But knowing what goes in good notes helps you captured things a source image will never contain. Your thoughts and questions will never appear on a copy of a source. They're easy to include in your notes, though.

How to Take Research Notes Recap #1

You need to take notes while you research. You can take notes through-out the research process but during research is essentially the prime note-taking session. Everything else builds from there and also some information is only available while researching. Miss the research notes, you're cheating everything else.

Modern Genealogy Note-taking

I've said note-taking 101 is taking notes while you research. Now we immediately run into a modern vs. paper issue.

In addition to taking notes, you want to log every search you make. This is traditionally done with a research log. Much of what goes in a traditional research log also belongs in your notes. In a paper world, not putting the info in both could be risky if the two got separated. It wass always safer to just duplicate the information.

In a digital world, it's easy to cut and paste info between notes and a log. It is also possible to use just notes to serve both purposes (this wasn't possible with paper because you couldn't search paper like you do digital documents).

There are many digital options to log every search. You don't have to create a "log" in addition to your notes. Initially, you might want to take notes and then enter the log information into a separate logging option.

A log can not replace notes. Trust me, I tried this. It'll break your log and make using the notes more time consuming in future, so it doesn't save you any time.

The Log Information You Should Also Note

Your research log includes:

exactly what you were looking for (why you checked that source),
what exact source you used (this includes what search you made if you used an online search form or how you looked for the information such as using an index or table of contents),
the information you need for a citation (don't skip this if you did NOT find what you were looking for, I have had to cite a source because I did not find information!),
plus any "notes" about the source.

Honestly, it was crazy to try and put so much information in a paper table but that was necessary when paper was the only option. You used the log as a cross-index as well as a quick reference to skim.

My recommendation is to put the research log parts in your digital notes and if you feel the need for a spreadsheet or other summary/cross-reference, copy and paste the basics to your "log" (and add a link to the actual notes). I personally do use a spreadsheet because I like reviewing information that way but a separate log is not necessary if you are fully digital (the information is necessary, it's the log format that is not necessary).

Putting these traditional log items into your notes gives you the space to accurately record the information. You might then decide a shorter version can be copied to an actual log once you have full details noted.

The absolute basics in your notes are:

The source the notes are for.
Your thoughts during research, including questions.

Notes about the source including:

issues with the source (are parts missing or hard to read?).
If you found information, the additional source details, like page number and where you put the information, if not recorded in your notes.
If you didn't find information, be clear about this. Don't miss recording any thoughts about why you didn't find something.

These are the absolute minimum and assume you're keeping a separate, detailed, log including what I mentioned earlier. I find it easier to have all those log details in my notes so I can review my notes without having to also look at my log. When people were writing by hand on paper, it did save time not to write the same long details multiple times. It would have been quicker to have your log next to your notes. You could then put details together in a report or analysis.

Copy and paste is fast. I recommend making your notes faster to use in future by typing once, and copying from your notes to a log. Automation can make it possible to keep one document that creates distinct notes and log files. That's even faster.

If you have ANY questions, put them in your notes. Later, seek the answer. This is how paper-based genealogists naturally improved their skills. If you're taking notes, it's easy to write down your questions. Looking for the answers improves your skills.

Noting Questions Example #1

You're at your local genealogy room using books of records. You read the introduction to a book and it tells you what is included in the book is only select information from the records. The introduction tells you what is abstracted (record what should be in the abstracts in your notes). The introduction doesn't specify what isn't abstracted (if it did, you should also put that in your notes).

The question you would record is "what other information could be in the original records?"

Based on this question you can plan research to get the original records to see if there is more information related to the question you're researching.

Maybe the originals are hard to get, though.

You might instead use that question to plan education into what other information could be in those records. Based on that you can decide how much effort to put into getting the originals (i.e., you prioritize money and/or time to get the originals if the extra information looks very promising or you prioritize other research if it doesn't---all genealogists have to make this kind of decision).

Noting Questions Example #2

Here's a different example. You're using deed records. You find a deed involving the surnames you're interested in. You find the phrase "by his next friend" in the deed.

You should note that you need to find out what this means.

And then you need to actually find out.

Most importantly, if anything else appears like it might be of interest, make a note.

Do You Need Genealogy Notes?

Hopefully you now understand that using digital methods to record genealogy information has made your options far more complex. Unfortunately that means many modern genealogists have taken cheats, instead of shortcuts, to take advantage of faster digital methods. Some of the key features of a solid genealogy research process, like note taking, got abandoned along the way and this ends up causing problems as you continue to research.

Remember, the biggest "problem" is you don't know what you will need in future. This applies to the information and clues you should gather but also just generally to your skills. When you start doing genealogy, you don't realize how important some of the seemingly "useless" stuff actually is.

You can get a free list of the individual items I suggest go in every research note in our free resource library. The library is part of our free online community. Sign-up, here.