It’s Saturday, once again, and time for this week’s Saturday Night Genealogy Fun with Randy Seaver on Genea-Musings.

This week’s challenge, like last week’s, is tech-related to our genealogy research:

1)  Then and Now – How have you documented your genealogy and family history research with source citations over the years?  What did you start with (Then) and what do you presently use (Now).  Please share your experiences.

In my life, I’d written many research papers, both in high school and college. I was in my 20s when I began researching my family history – pre-internet days – and I kept my research results on good old paper. My source citations were very simple at first, e.g. New Jersey Vital Records, but soon evolved into a traditional bibliographic citation, such as would be found in a college paper.

I actually continued with that method for decades, even after I switched to genealogy software, saving my citations in the Notes for each person. That was mainly because using those templates made me a bit crazy.

A couple of years ago, I started making more of an attempt to use generated source citations and tried out EasyBib, Zotero and Cite-Builder. Yes, I have Evidence Explained on my book shelf, but mainly use it for unusual items I want to cite.

Last year, I began my software cleanup, both in terms of adding people and in formalizing citations, trying to use the templates in RootsMagic 7. That is moving along at an okay pace, although I still really, really don’t like the templates. Although I have downloaded both RM8 and RM9, there is a learning curve to the new RM versions. The RM7 templates frustrate me enough that I decided to stick with RM7 until I finish this project. No point in adding a learning curve to my frustration levels, too!

Thanks, Randy, for this week’s challenge.