2015: The Year In Review

At this time of year, it’s become a tradition to look back at the highlights from the previous year. You see this a lot with television news programs… and online with blogs. So, here goes.

Looking Back

This year has not been a terribly prolific year for blog posts. I’ve done a fair amount of writing. It just hasn’t been for the blog. I wrote a total of 17 posts, as follows:

• January: 2 posts
• May: 3 posts
• August: 3 posts
• September: 2 posts
• October: 3 posts
• November: 2 posts
• December: 2 posts (including this one)

Rather pathetic actually.

Perhaps that’s why the top ten viewed pages were all written in prior years and most have appeared on previous years’ top ten lists.¹

10. Jacob Hoover (ca 1746-1800) (#5 in 2014)
9. Making a Deed Map from Old Metes and Bounds
8. Pennsylvania Warrant Township Maps (#9 in 2014)
7. 5,000 Acres—Where Did It All Go?
6. Andreas Huber Origins: Trippstadt, Ellerstadt, or Ittlingen? (#8 in 2014)
5. Lancaster County Deed Books Online (#4 in 2014)
4. Huber Immigrants (#6 in 2014)
3. Friday Finds: Trinity Lutheran Birth and Baptismal Records Online (#7 in 2014)
2. How to Use the Online Land Records at the PA State Archives (#3 in 2014)
1. Pennsylvania Genealogical County Map (#2 in 2014)

Although I didn’t write much this year, I did improve over last year on the number of views and unique visitors—24,000+ and 11,000+, respectively. I hope that’s because more people are finding the information I’ve posted useful and relevant.

Looking Forward

However, I would like my total number of posts to go up in 2016!

Since I tend to write when I’ve research to report—or to organize said research into coherent conclusions—I’ve either not been terribly successful, or perhaps not so active with my family research.

I know I’ve been actively researching. But I’m the first to admit it’s been all over the place—work on my family lines, work for several writing projects, and just data collection for specific surnames. None of it significant enough to compile into a compelling article.

So, to accomplish my first goal of writing more, I’ve got to set another goal. To be more organized and targeted in my research.

This one I find difficult to do. Online access to records has spoiled me. I love that feeling of success when you find what you’re looking for. And the online data is so easily accessible it’s easy to get distracted as new questions come up—whether they pertain to the original research question or not.

But once you’ve tapped all the available online sources, it’s all too easy to get distracted or simply turn to another research question and start the process all over—never fully finishing the research on the first topic because you haven’t completed a “reasonably exhaustive” search by including offline records. Oy!

So, my goals for 2016—in order for everything else to fall in line—must be as follows:

1. Focus – Pick a project, topic, or family line and focus on it.
2. Plan – Decide on a research plan and stick to it. Plan out posts on the calendar; don’t wait for inspiration to strike.
3. Write – Compile and organize the research results, then write them up. Write up what I already know for the people/topics in the calendar; feed this into the research plan to fill in the gaps.
4. Share – And lastly, share what I’ve written. Maybe a reader will have more information or suggestions on where to look next.

Now to sit down and decide where I’m going to focus for 2016 and start planning.

How was your 2015?

• Category: Commentary, Fun stuff
• Tag: Year In Review