This post is about how I am planning to document my trip, and the tools I plan to use. There is no one way to do these things, but perhaps my account will help you plan your own trips or you may have some better ideas to suggest to me!
What is the purpose of your documentation?
The first step is to examine the purpose of your trip, what you plan to be doing, your documentation needs and the audience for your documentation.
The focus of my trip is family history and cultural experiences. I will be visiting a lot of churches, cemeteries, museums and art galleries. I will not be researching in archives, but I will still need to record family history information and, with luck, I may find documents to copy. I want to take a lot of photographs and some videos. As a writer and an amateur mixed media artist, I also want to record my personal experiences, do some writing and create some art. Some of what I document will be added to my family history database or online family tree, some will feed into blog posts and some, especially the art, will be just for my own personal consumption.
How do you want to manage information?
The next step is to consider options for how you plan to collect, store and process information you gather on your trip. Your choices will depend on the quantity and type of information you will be collecting, how you like to research, how much money you want to spend and how much you rely on tech.
I plan to travel light during the day, with just a note book, a sketch book and my phone. Each night I will share my experiences through a travel blog and social media, so I am taking a small laptop. I did consider using my iPad with a keyboard, but I decided that I would prefer the capabilities of a computer and it is more ergonomic too. I will also be collecting paper memorabilia, both for my family history and my art. I will keep a couple of file pockets for these in my suitcase, as well as an art journal in case I have the energy and time at night to get creative.
My aim is to write blog posts each day, but I do not want to bore my readers with the usual tourist information. So I have been researching the places for lesser-known interesting information and pre-populating my blog with draft articles, which I will add to as I travel. This means that I have to do a lot of research and writing up front, but I am addicted to research and that is not bothering me at all! This pre-work should make posting daily more achievable.
Protecting your information and a backup plan
I have learned from personal experience how terrible it is when you gather a lot of photos, information and records of your experiences and then lose them all. So this time I am much better prepared. I will be storing it all online, as draft blog articles and in Dropbox.
Dealing with photographs and videos requires special consideration. If you are using your phone, check that it has plenty of storage and then devise a strategy to back them up. Simple is best, or it will not happen! I do not have sufficient online storage for travel photos, videos or voice recordings and I do not want to pay for more, so at the end of each day I plan to email them to myself. They will automatically be stored by date taken, which will help me identify them later. It will also make them accessible for me to use in my blog posts and social media. Once I return home I will rename the files by date and location, and add them to my main photo storage system.
Taking family history with you
Going on a family history trip means that you have to take family information with you. You need to decide what information you will need based on the locations and purpose of your trip, and what format is going to work for you.
I do not want to carry heavy folders of information around. I considered installing my family history software on my laptop, but then I would lose the information if it got stolen. So I decided to update my Ancestry tree and Wikitree profiles instead. Some information is being stored as draft articles on my blog. I will also put some PDFs on my laptop about key family groups and print outs of information that I may want to show to other people.
A lot of the people that you talk to on your family history trip will not be familiar with the standard family history formats, such as family tree charts or family group sheets, so you may want to create and print out some information in a different format. For example, I have created an Excel table of family from Cornwall and I plan to create more for my London locations. A table format helps you group people based on location, year of birth, surname or other key information. Tables like this can easily be generated from family history software. My Cornwall list was created by searching for people in my direct line who were born in or died in a place that contains the word Cornwall.
I do not have a lot of family photographs, but if you do, taking copies of these may also be a good idea.
Social media
My main focus will be on my blog and I do not want to make sharing on social media too much of a burden, so I will probably limit myself to a daily photograph or video on Instagram. I will be using my Generations Genealogy account (generationsgenealogyaus), so follow me if you want to see my photos!
If you have any additional tips that you think suit my style and needs, please feel free send me a message through my Contact page.
rustenivy 