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Sunday, August 16, 2009

Staying focused... or not

How do you stay focused on your research?

I struggle with it. It's all the genealogy related stuff available on the internet that gets me. I'm constantly trying out demo versions of this, or checking out new databases of that, or following interesting discussions about the other. I tell myself it will ultimately help me because I'll know exactly the source and tool to use for anything. I'll have the most beautiful and useful charts, maps and timelines. My research will be comprehensively researched and carefully documented. The time I spend playing with these things is time well spent!

I'm kidding myself, and I know it.

My latest distraction (aside from Twitter and blogging, which I still say is to help me focus) is the current offer from World Vital Records for a few days of free access. I always intended to have a look at the site... sometime. It has all those Victorian government and police gazettes. There could be some really interesting, juicy stuff in there that I never knew about before.

The trouble is, I'm not really ready to look at it just yet. All I'll be doing is picking out names from my tree and typing them in to see if anything comes up. Not that there's anything wrong with that, necessarily. It's just that I keep on telling myself that I want to focus on some aspect of my tree and research it properly. That may include getting onto the site, or it may not.

I could just ignore the offer and pretend I never saw it... No, I couldn't... I already signed up a few days ago. Curse you World Vital Records, with your interesting free offer!!

So right now I'm about to start typing names into the website and see what pops out. I'll let you know how it works out in a few days!

2 comments:

  1. It was also difficult for me to take time off from "focused research" to just browse World Vital Records for several days. Since so much of their material is free elsewhere, I worked on the published family histories they have (which are probably also available elsewhere, but I haven't found them, yet); most of these histories are farther back in my family lines than the families I am working on right now, so it was a little bit like a pack rat with a grab bag - pull up hits, print out records, then lay them aside until I need t use them.

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  2. I find it easy to stay focused because the other world (that strange one away from genealogy) all too often rips me away from my research, and by the time I return to it I tend to be full of new ideas, or I've been inspired by others on blogs, just like this one!

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