I've spent a little too much time on the 1940 census to be honest.
Another problem I have is that I have LOTS of families in a fairly concentrated area. When I'm looking for one person, I'm always finding half a dozen others who are somehow related. What I decided to do was make a spreadsheet in Google docs that I could edit as I found these people. My spreadsheet is fairly simple and was created for me to use regardless of what computer I was on or where I was located.
I can also share this Google document with others or publish the spreadsheet live as is done here. I chose to use Ancestry.com's image links, but those on other sites could be used as well. I could share the link with others who might be interested in the same families. If I was sharing with others who didn't have Ancestry.com, I could link to websites on NARA or other sites.
Hopefully this will save me some time from repeatedly viewing the same places over and over.
this is so much smarter to have than the scrap of paper I have where I have written which page they are on - duh - I use spreadsheets all the time but didn't think to use one for this -
ReplyDeletemost of my family is in Iowa or Arkansas and they appear to be the last 2 states being loaded so I've been using Steve Morse' tool to get the correct district and then writing down the page because the pages don't print worth a darn from the national archives - so will print from ancestry when available
Another thing I might do is go back and add the Family History Library or NARA link for these as those images are free.
ReplyDeleteI just am reading the same ones over and over and thought there needs to be a better way...too bad it took me several days to decide to do this. I'm usually really big into charts and organizational ideas of that type.
Then I can share the public version of this database (which is a webpage) and let relatives know about it and they can look at the pages easily...or maybe even add information after seeing the names and having their memories jogged.
Great chart! I suppose one could link to a downloaded copy of an image on their hard drive as well.
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