Make or Break Aspects of Genealogy Research

Objective:

List Critical Success Factors for successful genealogy research.

Conclusion:

Genealogy research is about collecting names and dates that you can trace to ancestry
But it is also about what you intend to do with the information and how effectively you can execute your plan.
The list below describes considerations I recommend to any would-be genealogist based on my experience.

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Make or Break Aspects of Genealogy Research

Continuity of Effort

You need a tool (e.g. genealogy software) and/or method of record keeping that is unambiguous and well organized.
Otherwise, every time you put it down, and time passes, you lose your conceptual continuity.
You go back to square one when you lose context. It's almost like starting all over again.

Durability of Record Keeping System

Family Historian is a multi-Year endeavor
You can't afford to invest in solutions that have a short life-span.

Ability to Easily Stratify Data by Family Side

Consider your audience. Descendants will be interested in full extended family.
But relatives from either Mother or Father side don't want to sift through your database reports looking for their people.

Collaboration

Must have willing contributors and an articulate medium of exchange
to share and verify family information
Proprietary Solutions will limit opportunity to share data and reporting with others who lack the software or service.
Easier to collaborate when data can be expressed in subsets suitable to target audiences

Data and image and web files must be easily stratified by family subdivisions

family side - (Mother / Father)
family branch (2-7)
family (FAM ID)
family member (IND ID)

Portable Data Format

Data and images collected must be renderable in a universal (data and web) format product or web service,
accessible to your intended audience.
Data invested in proprietary formats is lost if that software becomes obsolete and no data translation path is accessible to you

Include Images and Obituaries

A face for every name
Use consistent image perspective, e.g. Head shots of similar height/width dimensions.
Obituaries serve as next best thing to Biographies
Presentation of Obituary information can be more
robust, persistent and extensible than newspaper publication through simple restatement and narrative structure

Identity Management

Each family member must be uniquely identifiable through an ID number.
ID numbers are calculable by plotting member's position on the Family Tree Diagram.

File Management

Image files must be associated with a family member or family.
File association can be accomplished through enforced Member ID based file naming convention.

Image Files should

be cropped for content
of modest file size
of consistent width / height size
saved using a trackable Filename Convention

Database Capability

Need software to Record, Query and Report
Need to centralize record keeping at the data tables.
Changes will frequently occur; leverage database reporting capability to cascade changes to published reports.
One truth = One Place
Manually editing html files that could be refreshed from your central database is a waste of time and an exercise in futility.

Reports

Define Useful Presentation Views -

Family Portrait
Family Tree Diagram
Family Calendar
Family Index
Family Obituary Index

Publishing Organization Scheme

Web/Book Conventions to Guide Access
Top URLS - TOC
Stratify Reporting by Audience - All / Mom's Side / Dad's Side