You are a lucky duck if you have a whole room to use for genealogy in your home. If not, partition off a corner where you can put a comfy chair, a workable desk, a filing cabinet, a computer, all-in-one printer and extra storage space and a table. Good genealogy takes a lot of time and work and space and money. You can get by without spending a lot of money as I will show you here and in other articles.
You may be amazed at how much paper you can produce while doing genealogy. You want to save every piece of it and it should be filed in a filing cabinet right off the bat. Get a large enough cabinet right away, too. I got mine at garage sales. You can do good genealogy without using a computer but it sure makes it easier. If you do not want to use a computer ask a good friend who has one to help, preferably a genealogist as the rest of the world thinks we are a nutty bunch.
Computers have come down in price until they are affordable for most people and laptops and net books lead desktops in sales. People have their favorites, but I have been very happy with a Tiger desktop and now a HP laptop. Laptops are nice to carry along to libraries, archives and the other public buildings you will use to get your family documents.
An all-on-one printer has a scanner and a fax along with the printer. You want a scanner to put your pictures into your family tree. A fax will be handy when sending documents back and forth among family members. There is not a lot of difference between printers. It depends on how much you will use each part of one. Here though, a few extra bucks may save a lot of hair pulling. I have a wireless HP that I love.
Stock up on good quality acid-free paper. Never use cheap paper in a printer. It will mess it up and as the good stuff does not cost much more than the poor stuff, it is not worth it. Use good quality ink and pens, too. Buy folders and put the documents, notes and pictures for each family in one. Some people use different colors for each family. Stores have wonderful before school sales on paper, folders, and the like.
Form good habits early on in your research for your family ancestors. Start filing and keep at it on a schedule. One thing I wish I had done when I started over 35 years ago, was to have a large legal pad or such and wrote down every move I made each day when researching. That way you do not repeat the same searches and you have an idea what you have done and what you have to do. Make your work space as comfortable as you can and it will help on your family search.
Elizabeth Larsen has researched her family tree for 35 years. For more information on beginning a good genealogy go to http://www.squidoo.com/basicgenealogy.
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