Welcome to 2016 a New Year, still holidays for many so time to think of researching. 

Definitely take some time to come into GSQ’s new home. Lots of positive comments from everyone.

Some of you may even be considering doing a research road trip to look for your ancestor’s home town or find them in the cemetery or maybe even visit an archive.

Now is the time to start planning your trip.

As part of that planning,  remember to check also that the records you wish to see have not been digitised. At times it can be difficult to keep up with the rate that the pay sites, archives and Family Search are digiitising records so you may not have realised that the record you are travelling to see you could actually view in your own home. 

1. Who is going with you and how much research time will you have?
Strangely not all family members are that excited about family history research so work out what else is around your preferred research area that you can use as an enticement for your family to visit the area.

2. Have you researched what museums, libraries, local history study rooms (such as council archives) might be there and their opening hours? It may be your holidays but it also tends to be the major time when others also go on holiday. Don’t just check a website as often these are not updated as regularly, also a phone call can generally gain a lot more information about other people to contact and what resources might be available.

Remember they may also store at least some of their records offsite so worth talking with them to pre-order to get the records onsite and also to have some records available to start your day there. Nothing worse than only having one day somewhere and having to wait for a record to arrive and seeing your precious minutes ticking away.

3. What do you want to do in the area? Is there anything you can do family history wise that is also family friendly? Maybe a farm visit or pioneer museum visit? Maybe a visit to the Cobb & Co museum which has displays of historic trades?

Maybe you can’t go away on holiday but it is still possible to do a “Genealogy Research Trip” virtually

4.  Have you “virtually walked” your ancestor’s homeplace using Google Earth? This works best in a rural area as they tend not to have had as much demolition and rebuilding as do the cities. Even if there has been building demolition you can still get a feel for the geography of the area as mountains tend to stay in place as do rivers.

5. Have you researched all the family on Trove? Even if the local newspaper to the area has not been digitised you will often find information in other papers, maybe not in such depth as a local paper but at least it will give you an idea. Remember it is worth going back and redoing your searches as with all the wonderful people doing correcting previously unknown family mentions may no be found. 

6. Have you checked out the various Facebook groups (over 5500 genealogy groups on Facebook now)?

7. Have you done a Google blog search to see if any of your ancestor names or ancestral places are mentioned?

8. Have you saved that regular search as a Google alert so that Google will keep on doing the search for you and will email you the results it finds?

9. Have you done a search on YouTube for videos relating to genealogy? Or DNA testing? German research? or maybe old newsreel footage such as on British Pathe with its over 
90 000 historic clips?  

10. Have you checked out the new indexes online at the Queensland State Archives  (and they are putting up videos of their seminars on YouTube if you have missed any of them)

However you get to spend the next few weeks I wish you every success in your research in 2016.