My papers are finally done and so I should have more time from now on. (Finals won’t be too hard this semester, thankfully.) So, Saturday afternoon I was decluttering my room, and I discovered all my genealogy research notes from fall 2005, on my Iavicoli ancestors in Chieti, Italy, and my Shanks ancestors in Petersburg, Virginia, and my Bailey ancestors in Anson County, North Carolina. There was a ton of stuff and I didn’t really know where to start or even how to organize it.

Sunday morning in the shower, the problem came to mind again. Immediately I thought of Backpack — it’s how I now organize everything else (my to-do lists, extra notes, etc.). And I realized it would be perfect for genealogy.

It’s kind of like a wiki, in a way, but with a few more structural things added in. The basic unit would be a page (like a web page, or a folder), which you could organize however you want. (Flexibility is key — imposing much of a structure will alienate all those who would prefer a different structure. It’s better to let it flow and fit the contours of each user’s way of working.)

On each page, you’d be able to add notes, to-do items, pictures, and whatever else you’d want. Pretend you’re working on your Jones line. You could create a Jones page and basically throw all your stuff in there, and then later on sort it into subpages with the Indiana line, the Illinois line, the Canada line, etc. If you found a document on a microfilm, you could photocopy it and then scan the copy in and attach it to that page. (You could even create pages for individual people, if you had enough material. The point is, you could organize it however you want.) And if you didn’t want to scan it in, you could still put in a “placeholder” document that would let you know you have a paper copy (”This document is in my Chicago folder,” for example).

As far as the Backpackish features go, the question now is whether it’s best to just integrate with Backpack via the API or to try to do it ourselves. The advantage of Backpack is that it’s already written. The disadvantages are that it costs money for the larger accounts (>5 pages), and it’s not specifically tailored for genealogy. Hmm…

This would also act as a kind of scratchpad for research notes, an inbox where you can put things that you later put in a place that makes sense to you. At the same time, however, it’d be really nice to have a “what-if” system in place that lets you work with your actual data, molding it like silly putty into a variety of key shapes in the hope that it’ll fit the lock. It’d have to use copies of your data, of course, like cloning your ancestors and moving them around to see if any connections arise. If users feel like their data is safe and won’t be lost, and if there’s a good way to “play” (i.e., try new ideas out), then they’ll be able to explore and come up with things that wouldn’t have occurred to them otherwise. That’s the theory, at least. More later.

I also think a research log needs to be integrated into the system. There has to be some way of keeping track of what you’ve already done, so that you don’t keep retracing your steps. In my short-lived fling as a family history major, I often dreaded filling out the research logs for my classes. And then I’d get to the end and have to try to fill it in from memory, which was even less fun. There has to be a better way. I don’t know what the answer to that is, though.

Thoughts?

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