I am the first to admit here that I am venturing a bit out of my comfort zone with today’s post. Although there are several tech products that I use for genealogy and am very familiar with them, Airtable is not one of them. Therefore, this post is going to be similar to last year’s Tech Moments that were published each month – or, in simple terms, an overview of Airtable with links for readers to investigate.
I do find Airtable to be an intriguing tool to keep genealogy research organized and easily searchable.
First, don’t be scared off by the home page, which talks about empowering teams or to contact sales.
There is a free version of Airtable that should meet the needs of most genealogists and, while you can collaborate with someone else using Airtable, it is also extremely useful for a single user to keep track of research.
What is Airtable? It’s a very sophisticated database program, which is like Excel, but offers so much more. Excel files stand alone, but Airtable bases, as they are called, can be linked to each other.
I first heard about Airtable from a genealogy friend, Nicole Dyer, who with her mom, Diana Elder, are the Family Locket creators who brought us Research Like A Pro and my first experience listening to an Airtable talk was the presentation that Nicole gave to the Pima County Genealogical Society here in Tucson back in 2021. It is an excellent overview of how to use AirTable. [This talk, like many for PCGS, was recorded. Join the society for $25/year and you can access the Airtable talk and the handout, plus listen to several year’s worth of meetings.]
The title of this post has a focus on the genealogy FAN club, but can be used in many other ways, too.
Let’s look at the FAN Club – which is made up of the Friends/Family, Associates and Neighbors of a single ancestor or an ancestral family.
Most genealogy software programs don’t yet have the capability to attach non-family members to individuals. Therefore, any connections we want to note need to be recorded in the notes sections of the software.
Airtable is a much better tool to keep track of FAN club connections because multiple tables can be linked and switching from one to another is just a single click. The FAN Club can be entries of court witnesses, deed witnesses, census neighbors, tax list neighbors, etc. who are all linked to a single person or family.
The FAN Club base can be linked to, say, a research log connected to the family. If desired, Airtable can be used to collaborate with someone else working on the same family line.
Airtable data is stored on the cloud, so you need internet connection to access it. However, if the day comes when you no longer use Airtable, all of your information can be downloaded as a CSV file and imported elsewhere.
Nicole Dyer can be found in several other online websites talking about Airtable and sharing templates.
BuiltOnAir – All Things Airtable is a podcast all about using Airtable and Nicole was the guest speaker on the show several years ago, speaking about Airtable and genealogy. The episode can be viewed on YouTube.
Nicole can also be found in the Airtable Universe, where she has shared her templates set up for genealogy research. These templates can be downloaded and used for free. Just sign up for a free Airtable account to use them.
Further resources to learn more about Airtable:
What Is Airtable? A Beginner’s Guide on How to Use Airtable
What Is Airtable? Why, When and How to Use It
Airtable on Social Media (Facebook page/group)
One more suggestion is a book (expensive) published in 2024, available on Amazon – Learning Airtable: Building Database Driven Applications with No-Code by Elliott Adams. It’s about $60 with Amazon Prime, 79.99 without it. UPDATE: Currently on sale on Amazon for $55.82.The title scares me – a non-techy person – but the early reviews said it was an easy read and excellent resource for a beginner to learn how to use Airtable.
If you haven’t ever looked into Airtable, I highly recommend learning more about it, whether or not you decide to use it. Several genealogy webinar presenters have incorporated its use into talks (not about Airtable) so if you happen to attend a webinar where it’s being used, you’ll understand a bit of how it works.