1st – This is not a paid advertisement and I get no money for sharing my thoughts on Obsidian.
I’m a note taker! There I said it. I’ve been jotting down things since I learned to write. And doing genealogy research, well, let’s just say that the amount of things I write down daily has gotten overwhelming.
I write notes on a date of birth or death so I can keep it handy while doing looking lookups on various sites. I write down the names of neighbors that pop up (FAN club). I write down names of books, websites, and everything in between. I jot down little reminders as I go for other tasks to do later.
Luckily I have a glass top desk so the amount of sticky notes and paper I use has decreased for writing down little reminders. I also write on a magnetic board above my desk – just quick notes nothing in depth.
I also use and love Evernote. I clip articles, add a census screenshots and make notes about what I’m seeing or not seeing (still looking for my Masons in 1920, where did they go). I can use my iPad or phone to look up notes when I’m out researching, and I love that I can use my Apple Pencil to write down notes and they show up in Evernote. And the tags… ohhhh, the tags. I love tags.
But no app is ever perfect, and sometimes my notes are just a stream of jumbled info and then I’ll need to connect all the dots. We all know that we do not find all of our genealogical data in proper chronological order and many times we need to a way to dump all of our thoughts down so that we can keep track of everything (at least I hope it’s not just me).
This is where Obsidian comes in, it is an amazing note taking app. I am not qualified to give a tutorial on it and its many uses but I will link to a few great Youtube videos to help you get started. But I can tell you how it’s helping me with my genealogy.
Why is it amazing? Well, you can link all of your tags and post topics in the note itself. What? Here is a screenshot of my 1st real note in Obsidian:
See, each name, place, object, or idea I use as a tag can be searched, and LINKED to other notes.
In the above screenshot I’ve been making notes as I search for the other children of Bethina Littleton Condon, I have info that she had 12 children but I only knew of 2. So, I want to keep track of what I’m finding in my searches and my conclusions. Yes, I can do this in Evernote, but I can not add tags or links in the middle of a note – the tags are attached to the whole note itself – they aren’t part of the note. I can go to another note and copy a link and insert it into a new note, but that’s not always what I’m trying to do. Here in Obsidian I can add a # to any word in a note and it creates a tag ANYWHERE IN the NOTE! I can also add [ ] before and after words and if I then click that word it will make a new note with that word as the title. And it’s all searchable.
So, what makes this better (for me anyway) well it’s this:
I can see how all of these tags in the notes connect to other tags and how they connect to other notes. In the above screenshot you can see all of the notes and tags that trace back to Bethina Littleton Condon. At a glance I see names, I see census years and counties I’ve tagged.
And to get super fun I can animate my graph view, this shows me the order everything was added. How fun.
I will say there is a learning curve with Obsidian, but heck what app doesn’t have a learning curve, if you need help in Obsidian just open the command palette and it will guide you.
Now, I’m not ditching Evernote, I love that it is my catchall for docs and images that I need to reference or save for later with an attached note as to why. But, Obsidian has helped me sort my thoughts and findings on the Condon kids in a new way – a way that works for my brain. I love seeing how everything is connected. Heck I’ve done this with mind mapping apps and that works good for me also, but this, well, I can type it all out as I’m going then see where the connections are.
Obsidian is free so why not give it a try. It might just help sort thoughts on a brick wall or two.
Links to Obsidian demos:
Obsidian for Beginners: Start HERE — How to Use the Obsidian App for Notes