How do I record my data?

When people start researching their own family tree it can be tempting to record the minimum information necessary. Initially, it does not seem important to record too much detail; you may feel that the key facts are enough - Birth, Baptism, Marriage, Death and Burial.

This is fine if you are really not intending to do much more than find out who your Granny's sister was. However, if you intend to really have a go at recording your history as fully as you can get it, then recording your data accurately is vital.

The main part of recording data is the SOURCE of the information you have just collected, be it "Conversation with Aunt Jean on the 10th April 1998" to recording "11th April 1998 - Visit to Archives department in Sheffield - Found entry for XYZ. Entry for XYZ was in Holyrood Catholic Church Baptism book 1870 - 1910, page 198, entry 956, Baptism of Mary Brown" with this data you should also record all the information contained within the entry, including who performed the ceremony, witnesses and any comments made within margins etc.

This correct recording of all the source information will prove invaluable later when having collected enough data, you decide to let the world have sight of your work, it will show that you have researched it well and allows others to check its validity. After all, the people who cross reference the data you provide and check the source may turn out to be a whole new side of the family tree that you had been unable to locate or prove.