Robert Ragan s TOP 3

Transcription

1 Robert Ragan s TOP 3 Internet Genealogy Research POWER TECHNIQUES that Have Stunned Audiences POWER TECHNIQUES TWO: Robert s Unique "Gather, Store and Quick Find Method." You'll have to see it to believe it, but here is the benefit: With your search engine skills you will be able to find mountains of valuable information on the Internet. The last thing you want to do is start printing it. You could and should start making "favorites" of the Web pages you find, etc. but they may be gone the next time you visit that Web page. This is the solution: It is a profoundly easy way to GATHER and STORE the valuable genealogy information you find on the Internet. Then when you need that information again, you can find it in a matter of seconds, versus printing everything out and shuffling through papers the rest of your life. I've never, ever heard of anyone else doing this. As far as I know, I invented this technique. Once you learn it, you will thank me forever. And yes, you will be stunned. Before you get started with Techniques TWO and THREE, I want to make sure that you understand something loud and clear... You will discover things you've NEVER heard before. Do you think you can just go on the Internet and get everything you need? You will miss out on some very important things here if you do. It is true that there is some great stuff on-line, but you will NOT find most of this information anywhere else because I developed the unique approach to TWO of the three top techniques myself, and have the best method around of teaching the first one. 1

2 About the Gather, Store, and Quick Find Method: Your job is to gather all the good information (having to do with your personal research needs and situation) that you possibly can. As you use the Internet s search engines, and do several of the other things shown to you in this system, you ll come across lots of valuable information. Keep in mind that this will mostly be information on YOUR surnames of interests, and the places they came from. However, this exciting gather, store, and quick find method can be used for other projects, as well. Are you thinking, Arrrgh! I don t want more information overload? Don t worry. This is a wonderful way to handle lots and lots of your data. In fact, the more you gather the better it works. Here s a brief overview: -The key is to make LARGE storage files of information on your word processor. By large, I mean a document that will eventually be over a thousand pages long. Yes, one large bundle of information in one huge storage file. It doesn t take a lot of space on a disk or on your computer s hard drive to save large amounts of text. -You will make one storage file (again, one document on your word processor) for each surname you are researching. For example: I create a document on my word processor and name it ragan.doc. Over a period of time you will continually gather and store information on a certain surname. Again, you will be dumping new information (or, storing it) to the SAME large document over and over again. Note: You DO NOT want to make a bunch of smaller files. This will only slow you down when you are flying through information at a blazing speed. - Gather and Store means: Copy, Paste, and Save. Here s a Brief Overview of How It Works: You will be looking at a Web page on the Internet (which means that your Web browser is open) and also have your word processor open. So, BOTH programs have to be open at the same time. You can tell which programs are open by looking at the bottom of the screen at the Task Bar. Here is how it looks: 2

3 Note: A common error people make is to have too many windows open at the same time. Many times advertisement windows pop up, and other times people aren t aware that they are opening lots of windows. This problem will slow your computer s performance and might even cause it to lock up. When you see valuable information on a Web page, you click and hold down your left mouse button, while dragging the cursor down, over the text. This highlights the text. You ve probably done this with your word processor while typing letters, etc. Then you will go to the Edit menu and choose the Copy option. The next step is to go to your word processor (which you already have open) and go to the Edit menu there. You will choose the Paste option. This will paste the information that you copied from the Web page into the document. Then, you Save the document. This is a very quick way to gather and store information. Here s a good tip: Go back to the Web page and highlight the URL (that s the Web address where all the gibberish is) and copy and paste it to the bottom of the information that you pasted into your word processor. This way, you know the source of the information. This is the brief explanation (or huh? version) Next we will go through it step-by-step together. This is really something 3

4 The Gather, Store, and Quick Find Method Open your word processor. It doesn t matter which one you use. If you can use it to type a letter, you can use it to make a storage file. Make sure you are looking at a blank page. This is a new document that has no name. SAVE this document as YOURNAME Storage File. The one in the examples you will see in this section is named, RAGAN Storage File. Now, MINIMIZE your word processing program. Look in the top right corner of your screen and click on the Minimize button. You will see your desktop (your main computer screen with all of the icons, etc.) but your word processor is still open. You can tell that it is still open because of the large button at the bottom of your screen, on what is called the TASKBAR. Connect to the Internet and open your Web browser. This is what you look at the Internet through. It doesn t matter if you are using Internet Explorer, or Netscape or the AOL Web browser. If you are looking at text and graphics on the Internet your Web browser is open. MINIMIZE your Web browser. You should now be looking at your desktop, and there should be two buttons showing on your taskbar. BOTH your word processor and Web browser are now open at the same time. You can quickly switch back and forth between the two programs by clicking on the two buttons on your taskbar. Please try this yourself and make sure that you understand how it works. Make sure that you have both your word processor and Web browser open at the same time and can go to either one of them by clicking on the buttons at the bottom of your taskbar. Using your Web browser and the Internet s search engines, find some information on one of your surnames of interest. In my example I have found some information on-line about my Jonathan Ragan ancestor. 4

5 When you find some valuable information (or any on-line text for the sake of practice), click and hold down your left mouse button while dragging the cursor down over the text. This highlights the text. You ve probably done this with your word processor while typing letters, etc. Now you will go to the Edit menu and choose the Copy option. The next step is to go to your word processor (which you already have open) and go to the Edit menu there. You will choose the Paste option. This will paste the information that you copied from the Web page into the document. Then you would go to the File menu and choose the Save option. 5

6 You have copied information you saw on the Internet and pasted it into your word processor. Then you saved that information, which is now in your storage file. Here is how mine looks: Examine the text in my RAGAN storage file. Note that Anne Stanton posted this. Do you see how her name is underlined? This is off the Internet, so that underlined text is a hyperlink. This hyperlink should lead to more information about her. So I will go back to the Web page by clicking on the button at the bottom of my task bar. Then, I click on the link that says, Anne Stanton. It does have more information about her. There is an address, and even a mailing address. I will copy and paste this information into my RAGAN Storage File too. 6

7 After I paste the contact information for Anne Stanton into the storage file on my word processor; I go back, yet again, to the Web page. The Web page that has her contact information is still displayed so I click the Back button on my Web browser to get back to the original Web page that had the information on Jonathan Ragan. There is one more important thing that needs to be done. Do you know what it is? I also need to copy and paste the URL (Web address) into my storage file. This will let me know the source that the information came from. Note: In this case, I will dump the information into my RAGAN Storage File only. But if this Web page had more information, or had links to other Ragan Web pages, I might have decided to make a Favorite (or, bookmark) also. Here is how the text in the RAGAN Storage File looks. In this case, I went back to copy information from my Web browser THREE times: The first time for the main body of information, the second time for the contact information of the person who posted the message, and the third time for the URL, or Web address. The text isn t pretty, and it doesn t have to be. You will not have to make your information look nice. Dump it, save it, and go! 7

8 Are you thinking, I will go crazy looking through all of that text!? Oh yes, I agree. You will wind up falling asleep and drooling on your keyboard. Did you know that you have the ability to get to things AND retrieve information from your storage files with LIGHTNING SPEED? Let s look at your Web browser first and then come back to your word processor. If you DON T already know this (I ve found that about 70% of folks at my genealogy seminars don t) you will love me forever: The Key Word Search Feature on Your Web Browser When you go to a Web page with a lot of text, you can go blind looking at all of the information looking for your clues (key words). So, use your Web browser s key word search (or "Find") feature (not to be confused with a search engine). Often I will find genealogy Web pages that are very long. And since these genealogy pages are full of names, dates, and places, looking at them carefully for good information puts quite a strain on your eyes. You have the answer to this problem waiting for you on your computer already. The "Key Word Search" feature on your Web browser is one of the most overlooked tools I have seen (next to the search engines). If you find a Web page with tons of information, you can use your Web browser to do the looking for you. For example: Let's say I am looking for information on the surname Ragan, who lived in Oglethorpe County, Georgia. When I got to that lengthy Ragan Web page, I would do a key word search (again, this tool is already built into my Web browser) and type in the word oglethorpe. Then I might try doing a search on that same Web page using any other of my clues as key words. Here s how it works with the Internet Explorer Web browser: Click on the Edit menu and choose the Find (on this page) option. 8

9 This brings up the Find window. Then, all you have to do is type in a key word and click on the Find Next button. IF that key word is anywhere on that Web page, the key word search feature goes right to it in a fraction of a second and highlights it for you. Then, you would click on the Find Next button again and it will find and highlight the same key word for you again in a different area of that same Web page. When you are done with that key word, you would try another one of your clues as a different key word and search again, through the same Web page, using the exact same method. 9

10 It works the same way with the Netscape Web browser: Go to the Edit Menu and choose the Find in Page option. Then, do the exact same steps as shown in the Internet Explorer example. AOL Users: Go to the Edit menu and choose the "Find in top window" option. Then type in the word or phrase and click on the "Find" button. This is one of the most overlooked time saving tips in the on-line genealogy world. Make sure that you know how to do this. You will thank me for helping to save your eyesight. TRY THIS: Go to ANY Web page that has a lot of text and scroll down towards the bottom of the screen. Then, pick out any word on the Web page. Now, scroll back up to the top of the page and use your Web browser to "find" that word. Review the previous examples if you need to. Now let s take that exact same technique over to your WORD PROCESOR: This is how you can search through hundreds of pages in one of your storage files with lightning speed. The computer (namely your word processor s key word search feature) is doing all the work. After you see how this works, please promise me that you will never get caught sitting scrolling through lengthy documents of any kind again. 10

11 How to Use the Key Word Search Feature on Your Word Processor Did you know that your word processor has a key word search feature too? It works almost exactly like the examples you saw with the Web browsers. This wonderful feature is the reason you can create large storage files on your word processor. You can have over a thousand pages of information (text that you have copied and pasted, or dumped ) in your storage files. The more information you have, the merrier because you will know how to use your clues to search through these storage files quickly. Here s how it works: Open a storage file on your word processor and click on the Edit menu and choose the Find option. In this example I have copied and pasted the information you saw being used in the previous section (searching through Web pages) into my Ragan Storage File. Then, I type in my key word oglethorpe and click on the Find Next button. The key word search feature on my word processor goes right to the word and highlights it. Now I can search the same storage file using a different key word. Isn t this a great way to look for your stored information? 11

12 Note: In most cases you will be using the key word search feature to search for only ONE key word at a time. However, you can use more than one word if you want. Just think of it more like a phrase. For example, if I did a key word search for jonathan ragan (two key words together), it would search for those two key words together, exactly like I typed them in which is like a phrase. Look for the Match Case option when you do key word searches. This applies to the key word search features on both your Web browser and word processor. Here is an example: If the U. S. state, Georgia, was one of my clues, I would search for the key word georgia. But I would also need to search for the abbreviation of that state s name, which is GA. Here s the problem: If I do a key word search for ga, it will stop at every instance of ga it sees in the text. The letters ga are right in the middle of my surname Ragan, so the key word search feature would stop on this word (and others) and slow me down. The solution is the Match Case feature. You will see this handy tool in the options when you do key word searches with your Web browser and with your word processor. In this example I would simply type in GA in capital letters and click on the Match Case option and do a search. 12

13 Now You Are Whizzing Through Information Like a Pro! You are saving your eyesight and saving lots and lots of time. How many hours have you wasted scrolling through pages of text in the past? Well, never again. You ve got a game plan (your clues that you use as key words) and will be able to focus on whatever goals and research objectives that you decide to pursue. When you see information for the first time, you naturally categorize it in your mind. There is an A list and a B list. On the Internet this applies to mostly to information that you get from Web pages and messages. Here is a good general rule of thumb to follow: For Web pages: Any important A list items will be copied and pasted into your storage files on your word processor and you make the Web page (or Web site) a Favorite (also called a Bookmark ). For B list items, you will consider making it a Favorite. It is a maybe item. For Again, the A list information gets dumped into storage files on your word processor. Remember that this is the important stuff. You don t want to copy and paste every message you ever get into your storage file. BUT... you can transfer any B, or maybe items, into a folder (or mailbox) in your program. There is no C list. If the information is not important, or is not even good enough to be a maybe, it gets ignored or deleted. So, let s say that you joined a surname mailing list and have been transferring those messages to a folder (mailbox) on your program. The A list information has been dumped into your storage file on your word processor but you still have a lot of information on the B list to consider. What do you do? You certainly don t want to sit there and open every single message one at a time. There is a simple solution: Guess what? Your program has a key word search feature too. 13

14 How to Use the Key Word Search Feature in Programs Open your e- mail program and click on the Edit menu and choose the Find option. Note that there are two choices from the Find option: Find Text and Find Messages. The example shown is using the Eudora program, but all e- mail programs have these similar features. The Find Text option lets you search for the key words in the subject headings (or titles) of the messages. The Find Messages option lets you search for the key words in the body of the message (or the message itself). Your most common searches will be using your clues to find key words buried in the body of messages. This is a fantastic tool. Once you get the hang of it, you will use it almost daily to find information in genealogy-type messages and in your personal . 14

15 In this example, I am doing a key word search in my RAGAN Genealogy mailbox. Just like you have seen before, the key word search feature quickly finds the key word and highlights it. In the Microsoft Outlook program, look for the Find button and click on it. You type in your key word and click on the Find Now button. Note the Search all text in message option. This will allow you to search through all of the text in the messages. Also, note the Advanced Find button, which will give you even more searching options. 15

16 The Too Many Windows Open at Once Problem How many times have you been on the Internet and had those pesky pop-up banners and advertisements come up on your screen? Many times several of these uninvited guests will pop-up as you look through a Web site. Also, there is another thing that I see with computer students in my classes in every class. They open this program, then that program, and don t realize exactly what is open on their computer. When this happens, it can slow down your computer s performance and even cause it to lock up. You can tell that this is happening by looking at the bottom of your screen at your taskbar. In this case, there are four windows open. The key is to always be aware of what is on your taskbar. To close these extra windows, you can click on a button on your taskbar and click on the X to close it. Or, you can right click on the button, which brings up a shortcut menu, and choose the Close option. 16

17 That was a helpful tip for those of you who may be slightly computer challenged and start having those windows open up all over the place. Here is a great tip for the more advanced computer user: GO TO: If you don t want to use your word processor to make your storage files, I highly recommend the TextPad software program. You can download it free and it is fully functional for as long as you use it. Of course they want you to buy it (worth every dollar) but it will not expire on you and quit working. TextPad is a program that lets you do anything and everything with good old text. You can make huge storage files for each surname you are researching. Of course, it also has a key word search feature. You go to Search on the top menu area, select the Find option, type in your key word, and click on the Find Next button and you are zipping along at lightning speed. Now you know how Gather, Store and Quick Find Method works: This is one of the techniques that has sincerely stunned audiences. Yes, you will have to go over it a time or two to get it just right but when you do, you are going to never have to lose data again. Also, you will not have to print everything off the Internet and drown in a sea of papers that are hard to retrieve information from when you need it. Storage files work best when they are organized by surnames. For instance, I would have a RAGAN storage file and other storage files for other surnames, I'm researching. You will do the same thing. These storage files will get HUGE, with TONS of information in them. That's what you want and it does not take long to build up a nice storage file on any given surname unless it is a very rare name. 17

18 When I teach about storage files in seminars I either use a live computer hook-up or an overhead projector with every step plotted out with computer screen shots of the process. I go over it once and the audience will say, "Can you show us again?" So I carefully show them again. Then two thirds of them will have it. I don't read lips very well but I have seen people mouth the word, "Wow." So, I go over it one last time and make sure everyone has it. Then I ask, "Has anyone ever heard of anything like this before?" They always say, "No." These are such POWERFUL techniques. Here is a brief summary: This is easy. If you can type a letter on your computer you can do this. With your search engine skills you ve learned in Genealogy POWER TECHNIQUES ONE, you can now find mountains of valuable information on the Internet. Don t forget that your Web browser has a key word search feature. Remember, the last thing you want to do is start printing it. You could and should start making "favorites" of the Web pages you find, etc. but they may be GONE the next time you visit that Web page. STORAGE FILES are the solution: You GATHER and STORE the valuable genealogy information you find on the Internet. Then when you need that information again, you can find it in a matter of seconds, versus printing everything out and shuffling through papers the rest of your life. You gather and dump TEXT from Web pages that you come across that have valuable information. You can also gather and dump text from e- mail messages that are valuable. Not everything in the world, just the good stuff. So...let's say that you DO have a storage file on one of your surnames and it has lots of info in it. Will you SCROLL through it and go deaf, dumb and blind looking for these key words? No, you will lose your mind and start drooling on your keyboard. You can search through these storage files with lightning speed. Zip-zip-zip-zip...Key word by key word. Your word processor s key word search feature will do the work for you. amberskyline.com 18