For the beginner

Start your work

It is easy to make mistakes in your genealogy research in your eagerness. Many people want to quickly create large family trees that go back a long way. Often, second-hand sources or even family trees that others have created are used without review. The result is a tree with many errors, and if it is posted on "sites", it can also lead to others doing the same and importing these errors. In this way, the entire group of genealogists is affected. I would strongly recommend that you, as a genealogist, suck up a little on the concept of GENEALOGY RESEARCH. If you do, you will think that the central thing is the research and that the family tree is the result of serious and proven work. To achieve quality in your research, the following advice can give a good start:

1. Interview your older relatives. I did not do that and it was a mistake that led to many hours of unnecessary extra work. Ask about what they remember of older relatives. Birthplaces, dates of birth, relationships and other hard facts. Also ask about events they remember. This can be useful if you want to "bring to life" the people in your research. If you choose to do so, your research will be more interesting for others to take part in.

2. Get yourself a program or system to be able to enter your relatives into. Which program or system you use depends of course on how you view your research. Do I want the research to cost as little as possible, to get a feel for what it is like to do research, or to only have a limited scope? Yes, an Excel sheet will work. However, it requires more work because you have to build from scratch. If, on the other hand, you think you want to focus more on the direct research, there is a large selection of genealogy programs to use. Some are free, some are free up to a certain level, but most require some form of subscription or that you buy them.

3. Once you have chosen a program, you start entering yourself and the personal information you obtained in point 1. If you skipped it. Start by entering yourself and what you think you know. Regardless of how you start. Be careful to check the information. Note and link your sources from the beginning. Let your scientific mind guide you, not your zeal. It will be the absolute best in the long run.