Originally published 7 October 2019
I think I scare patrons at the Family History Center when I start opening multiple tabs, but once I’m done helping them, I notice they do it themselves. Opening tabs helps me not lose my original ancestor as I follow a chain of hints. I also refer back to the original ancestor as I compare his information to the hint.
Multiple tabs help me as I’m working on several family units with the same last name. In Italian genealogy, the same names are used over and over so I’ll have two cousins named Giovanni Manna born around the same time having children in the same time period and it is the wives names that tell me which family the children belong to.
At home I have dual monitors. Yes, it was weird at first but now I can hardly work without them. Usually I have a document on one screen and my genealogy program on the other while I enter the data. It is not unusual for me to have two screens running Firefox and about 15 tabs open in each.
For example, last night I was answering a question on my Facebook page, (Genealogy in Acerra, Italy). Right screen had Facebook open so I could keep referring back to the information provided. Left screen had 10 tabs of marriages open as I searched each of their indexes. I found the marriage record in the 8th tab but I’d never heard of the town the husband was born in.
Back to the right screen, new tab, Google the town. I found something that looked like it. Right click, open the Wikipedia article in a new tab which lead to another search idea. New tab, new search, found what I was looking for, moved tab to left screen to compare the information with the information on the town I had on the right screen. Good match.
Type abstract on Facebook in the right screen with the name of the town as written and in brackets the modern name, download the document from the left screen, open GIMP to crop the document and attach it to the abstract, add URL for the document and post to Facebook.